A Quixotic Quandary: Dreams Deferred

Quixotic. Now there’s a word for a word blog, an especially appropriate one as we watch our family's and friends' achievement of dreams being celebrated virtually, without the usual pomp and circumstance of a traditional graduation ceremony.   These 2020 graduates on every level from fifth grade to college will look back on the absence of this occasion with regret and sadness, but the memory will be tempered with the knowledge that an historic pandemic required sacrifice to protect everyone from a life and death scenario. So why might this year’s graduates find themselves in a quixotic quandary?


Let’s start over. 


The word quixotic means idealistic, sometimes even impractical. It is an adjective that often describes a person who is trying to reach dreams that seem too ambitious or difficult. 







As you look at the spelling of quixotic, a famous literary figure may come to mind—Quixote, that is, Don Quixote de La Mancha, the well-known Spanish knight elevated to fame by Miguel de Cervantes. This seventeenth century writer wrote the most influential work of literature in the Spanish Golden Age, Don Quixote of La Mancha, Part I (1601) and Part II (1615). When the story opens, the flamboyant character Don Quixano reads so many chivalric romances that he imagines himself to be a knight-errant whose mission is to revive chivalry and serve his country. Changing his name to Don Quixote, he enlists a simple farmer to be his squire, Sancho Panza, and names his exhausted horse Rocinante. He designates Aldonza Lorenzo, a neighboring farm girl, to be his lady love Dulcinea. In every adventure in Part I, Quixote encounters and attacks wind mills and men, believing them to be dangerous and harmful to women, making him a comic figure in his search for chivalry. Fourteen years later Cervantes writes Part II and Quixote sloughs off his insanity, denounces chivalry and returns home to die.


In 1965 Dale Wasserman’s book and Joe Darion and Mitch Leigh’s lyrics and music turned Cervantes’ story into a musical called Man of La Mancha, winning five Tony Awards, including Best Musical. The principal song was, you guessed it, “The Impossible Dream.” We have a love-hate relationship with impossible dreams.


Today even the phrase “tilting at windmills” implies someone is attacking imaginary enemies as did Quixote, but a closer look at our attempts to reach difficult life goals may give us more insight into the deeper recesses where those secret desires lie in each of us.


All of us were born with imagination, clearly some more than others, but to imagine and dream is part of our human nature. Yet why is it that we are hesitant, even embarrassed at times, to acknowledge and share those dreams with others? Is it because we may be seen as comic Quixote-like impossible dreamers? Criticism can be a deadly weapon that prevents us from going out on a limb against the odds, but we frequently succumb to it, putting our dreams on hold or permanently storing them away in the chest of once-upon-a-time good but unreachable dream-ideas.


A few weeks ago I finished writing a 90,000 plus word novel and have now begun the long, brutal search for an agent who will agree to represent my work to a publishing company. Every week I receive rejections from agents, and I think how easy it would be to simply leave the file on my computer and quit.  But I do not plan to give up. Is the idea of getting my book published far-fetched, acknowledging that the odds for publication are quite low? It does cross my mind every day, but then I think of all the success stories of people who dreamed big, against the odds, and made it. Should we call our dreams impossible?


Here’s a thought. Every idea that is shared with us is seen through a mirror-like lens, and we immediately, sometimes unconsciously, see ourselves projected in the situation created by this new idea. Because of our need to belong, to be like others, to feel included, we project ourselves into the picture and begin to evaluate it based on self-reflection, our own reactions to it. So when a friend tells me she’s thinking of going back to school to change careers, I think never in a million years at her age would I do that! So is it fear of taking a chance and failing? And do we project that fear on to others?


Psychologists tell us we have a strong need for acceptance, so we stay in step with the expectations of those around us. But what good does it really do to suppress our own dreams without giving them a chance? Frankly I don’t want to wonder, when it’s my time to go, why I didn’t do my best to publish my book.  What dreams deferred do you have just waiting for a chance to come to fruition? 

George W. Cecil once wrote, “On the plains of hesitation bleach the bones of countless millions who at the dawn of decision, sat down to wait, and waiting died."


This quixotic quandary is not just for graduates, you know, but all of us. So go ahead. Change your mind. Follow your heart. Take that new job. Change your major. Sign up for that class. Get on that dating website. Make that investment. Start a new business. Change the color of your hair. Get out of that harmful relationship.


Follow your bliss, as Joseph Campbell would say. Dream the impossible dream and don't give up!