The Dreamseller: The Calling by Augusto Cury Read Free Book Online Page B

challenges help nurture our dreams.”
    In studying the history of the wealth of nations, I understood the sociological meaning of this latest thought. Many who received inheritances without working for their success could not value their parents’ struggles. They squandered their family fortunes as if the money were unlimited. Inheritance bred empty, superficial lives. They were people who lived for the moment, trying to suck the maximum pleasure from the present with no regard for the future.
    While I criticized people for not being masters of their own destinies, I suddenly realized I was no different from them. I didn’t understand why such simple thoughts were so true. I dreamed of being a happy person but became miserable. I dreamed of living a better life than my father but replicated what I most despised in him. I dreamed of being more sociable than my mother but inherited her bitterness.
    I hadn’t learned what my struggles had to teach about reaching my dreams. I hadn’t dared reach for my dreams if it ever meant risking my reputation, my so-called brilliant academic career. I was barren inside and gave birth to no new ideas. I forgot that great thinkers were also risk-takers. They were called lunatics and heretics, and often became the subject of public scorn.
    Even students defending their masters and doctoral theses weren’t encouraged to take risks. Some of my colleagues tried to encourage them, but I held them back. Only after meeting the dreamseller did I come to understand that it was often our youth who brought about our greatest discoveries.

Bartholomew’s Dream
     

     
    A MAN ABOUT THIRTY-FIVE YEARS OLD, WEARING A BEIGE polo shirt, with well-trimmed black hair and a frown, bluntly told the dreamseller, “My great dream is to strangle my wife.”
    He wasn’t joking. He actually seemed ready to kill. The dreamseller didn’t answer right away, waiting for the man to continue venting his anger. “Who deserves a wife who betrays her husband?” the man said.
    Instead of calming the man down, the dreamseller added fuel to the fire. “Are you a betrayer, too?”
    The man reared back and hit the dreamseller so hard that he knocked him to the ground and bloodied his lip.
    Several onlookers came at the man, but the dreamseller quickly calmed them: “No, don’t hurt him!”
    The dreamseller dusted himself off and explained to the man, “We may not betray with our sexual organs, but we betray in thought, in action. If we don’t betray those we love, we betray ourselves. We betray our health, our dreams, our peace of mind. You mean to say you’ve never betrayed another or betrayed yourself?”
    The man silently nodded his head, confirming that, yes, he, too, was a betrayer. He betrayed himself daily with thousandsof morbid thoughts. His aggressive nature was only the tip of the iceberg. The dreamseller continued:
    “Is your wife your property? If not, why do you want to destroy her or destroy yourself because of her? Who said that because she betrayed you she is no longer a human being, a person who has cried, loved, been angered, known frustration? If you’re incapable of forgiving her and winning her back, why don’t you simply say, ‘I’m sorry, it’s over’?”
    The man walked away dazed. It was hard to tell if he would manage to win his wife back or allow himself to be won back by her, but he would no longer kill her. I was impressed by the dreamseller’s approach. It seemed like he provoked the man, so, in hitting the dreamseller, the man would get just a glimpse of what his murderous rage could do. And maybe that opened the man up to considering another alternative. The people nearby stared at the dreamseller as if watching an action film.
    As if that incident weren’t enough, the dreamseller turned to Bartholomew and asked him what his greatest dream was. I thought it was a bad time to open up such a question. Honeymouth had a way of turning any serious situation into a joke.
    He