Dreams and Journals

After a great night at YFM (my conversational hiatus with a certain interesting mind finally ended) I came home and hopped on MSN. Zach and I had a rather large conversation about dreams.

Maybe I'll post the guts of the conversation later, but here is the skeleton: I was sort of feeling down at the realization that the dreams I have today aren't going to be fully realized. Tomorrow I'll have a different, possibly more realizable dream, and I'll settle for achieving that. But the dream I have today, this grand goal, will probably not be realized.

The conversation basically went from there into whether that's a bad thing. If we continually chased the big dream, a lot of us would feel unsatisfied when we don't achieve our goal. If we modify our goal for something slightly more achievable, we'll still get a sense of accomplishment once we reach our goal.

From there we discussed what a person who continues to chase the largest dreams looks like. For somebody who feels forced into accepting the "lesser goal," the person who continues to chase his "greater goal" is a fool, worthy of contempt. For somebody who chooses his "lesser goal," understands why it has to be that way, and/or still feels a large sense of achievement, the person who continues to chase is "greater goal" is somebody to be respected, because he's not settling for what's good, or respectable. He wants what he wants, and believes is the best.

I guess everybody hopes they'll be the one who shoots for the highest goal all the time, and honestly, some people's "greater goal" might sound unincredible, like teaching math. But doesn't everybody have one absurdly amazing dream? Maybe it's to visit a certain country, or to be world-famous for something. Is it a bad thing to give up on those, since they might not be attainable? To tie it in with Deal or No Deal, is it okay to settle for the banker's $240, 000 rather than hold out for the $1 000 000, chances are you don't even have anyways?

So those were the thoughts for tonight. I might not even have anything left to go more depth into.

However, something else struck me about the conversation. It happened over MSN. Socrates and Glaucon, in Plato's dialogues, didn't have computers. They met in Athens. I've been reading a book about C.S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud, and a lot of what is referenced are letters and journals.

I don't write letters, and I don't keep a journal. But I wonder ... if the next generation wanted to write about me ... would they go to my blog and email in the same way we go to Lewis' letters and journals? Will these electronic sources be around for that long?

Should I start printing?