There are dreams of islands, and sailboats, and cloudless foreign skies and money and leisure and time; no office to go to, nowhere else to be.
Then there are things we want for others, the yearnings we feel impossible but we still have: an end to conflict and suffering, a world without bigotry, the alleviation of poverty, a halt to climate change.
And there are the deep longings we don’t much utter aloud: fragile dreams of sex and love and family, of repairing broken things, starting again, falling in love or falling back in love.
Then there is ... “providing for yourself in your retirement”?
When the federal treasurer, Scott Morrison, gets that faraway look in his eye, when he starts to look all dreamy and not really here, he’s thinking about his trifecta.
“I think … there are many great achievements in life. Raising your children, paying off your home and providing for yourself in your retirement. They are a trifecta of Australian dreams that we believe in,” he said on Thursday.
They are fine and worthy goals but are they dreams? There’s a difference. A goal is like a to-do list: things you set up so that you are in a strong and steady place to then start living your dreams (should you be the sort of person that requires a safety net).
But should they form the bedrock of our deepest aspirations?
In The Tempest, Shakespeare talks of the brevity of life
Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air.
The insubstantial pagent has faded, he goes on to say. But us?
We are such stuff
As dreams are made on.
And what dreams they are.
There is in Scott Morrison’s dreams a sort of stoical, workmanlike approach to life. It’s almost Protestant in its rejection of pleasure, and prime focus on duty and paying down debt. It’s sensible, I suppose. But you only get one life and it’s short (all “melted into air, into thin air”).
Where’s the fun in an existence that ends with a square ledger between you and the bank? It should end with memories of the times when you really let rip on your trifecta – maybe taking a small boat, you and your beloved, or a crew of your favourite friends and sailing around the under-explored islands of Indonesian archipelago.
Or there’s opening the ridiculous, but hey-it-may-just-work-and-I’ve-always-wanted-to-do-it cat cafe in the inner city that you have dreamed about since you were a kid. Or your dream may be to have a little patch of land in the Otways where at night you can hear the sea roaring nearby. So what if you die without having paid it off?
These are dreams and they are why I keep going. Dreams are meant to be our carrots, not our sticks.
Even if you’re a young Tory who finds Scott Morrison’s dreams beautiful and daring, there may be every chance you will not get to achieve these dreams. With housing increasingly out of reach for younger Australians, the dream is just to find a nice place to rent that doesn’t chew up more than half your income. With the retirement age and pension-eligibility being pushed towards our 70s, where is this “retirement” that Scott Morrison talks so lovingly of saving for?
Dare to dream differently from Scott Morrison. They don’t have to be big, expensive things, these dreams. George Orwell’s trifecta was this:
So long as I remain alive and well I shall continue to feel strongly about prose style, to love the surface of the Earth, and to take pleasure in solid objects and scraps of useless information.
And that is a dream worth living for.
What is your trifecta of dreams? Here are some of ours at Guardian Australia:
Elle Hunt
1. Journalism becomes a lucrative career path.
2. My friends, scattered across the globe, find themselves professionally and personally satisfied in the same city as me.
3. A Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever puppy, RRP $3000+, that I somehow source secondhand from a shelter to alleviate any feelings of guilt about preferring a pedigree.
Calla Wahlquist:
I dream of living in regional Australia without an ever-worsening threat of bushfire caused by our continued failure to address climate change and with decent internet. Scott Morrison’s dream is more realistic.
Melissa Davey:
1. No longer getting the message “transaction declined” at the checkout.
2. Living on my own: free of a housemate, a partner, or children.
3. Successfully replacing all of my furniture acquired from the roadside with proper stuff.
Warren Murray:
1. Live in two places at once.
2. Fly like Superman!
3. In the end, die instantaneously while feeling pleasantly surprised.
Stephanie Convery:
1. To be able to live a creative life without being forced to sacrifice basic comforts, like, oh, stable housing, fresh food, etc.
2. Comprehensive, free and universal health care, education and social welfare services.
3. A public dialogue about the future that is open, accepting and inspiring.
