Isn't It Pretty to Think So?

The beauty of the dream unfulfilled

The morning was warmer than it had been over the last several days. Sunshine. Long winter shadows on snow. A few robins in the bushes. Too early for robins? I wondered. When you walk alone in the early morning, you consider questions like that. You allow your mind to wonder, at least you try. It’s part of the meditation of a good walk, this wondering. And sometimes wondering turns to dreaming. That morning I was dreaming a familiar dream. A romantic dream. An unrealistic dream.

My walks were slowly becoming regular again. Something I had been wanting to revisit. And over the last few days, I had been traveling the same route along the train tracks, up and down the streets of neighborhood homes, and past a small corner building in the downtown, a vacant space for rent. It had been a coffee shop years before. Since the day the realtor’s sign was placed on the door, I knew what I had wanted it to become.

A bookstore. My bookstore.

I often imagined the space’s eventual transformation. Wooden shelves. Books stacked in corners. A bookstore cat, legs dangling as it sits silently on a windowsill. On the sidewalk in front in the summer months, tables lined with great books and obscure gems laid out in neat rows to show off the colorful covers. A dream evolving in my mind’s eye.

It’s a crazy, overly romanticized notion, this dream. Bookstore owners I know—Suzy at The Book Cellar in Chicago and Arlan at City Books in Pittsburgh, to name two—might shake their heads and most certainly tell me it’s not all literary magic as portrayed in the movies or in novels. It’s a struggle. It’s tenuous. It’s scary. Still, I can see my little shop. I can smell it. I can hear the conversation I’m having with one of the regulars about the beauty of Nabokov’s prose and Plath’s poetry, and as we talk, my hand is stroking the tail of the bookstore cat.

This dream, this silly idea—I’m quite aware—is never going to happen. It would be disastrous. Foolhardy. But it’s a dream. And dreams, well, we all need them. Not only the big ones that we strive toward and hope to bring to fruition through hard work, perseverance, and tenacity, but also the dreams that never were meant to be. They, too, are woven into the threads of life’s complicated yet magical fabric. They, too, are essential.

Consider your own dreams. There are the ones you are certain will never happen because they are either outrageous or you’re pretty sure your level of commitment is never going to reach the necessary heights. Sail around the world. Live in a villa in the South of France. Own a private island. Paint a masterpiece. Win the Nobel Peace Prize. Or maybe it’s a dream much closer to your heart and soul—a dream about health, children, love, a dream far deeper and richer than owning a small bookstore on the street corner in the town where you live. Still, the scope of the dream is not the point. It is the dream itself, and it is the knowledge, the certainty that it will go unfulfilled that becomes an undeniable part of us.

I once wanted to be a folk rock musician and perform at the legendary Troubadour in Los Angeles. That never happened and never will. As a kid, I dreamed of being the second baseman for the Pittsburgh Pirates. A few years later, I wanted to sail the ocean and explore the deepest seas with Jacque Cousteau. That dream died when I barely passed my 6th grade swim test. But these dreams, these unreachable visions, all these years later are still there. They have stayed with me on a deep and cellular level even after the slim reality of their attainability has long faded. Tiny pieces of those dreams are with me, always, and just as much a part of my life as dreams fulfilled.

Before the pandemic, there had been a used bookstore for sale in Edinburgh, Scotland, one of the world’s UNESCO Cities of Literature. A reader’s city. A writer’s city. The bookstore, Tills—a delightful secondhand shop near the university—was a magnificent place in an old corner building run by the same family for 34 years. The husband and wife were retiring and taking bids from potential buyers, hoping to find just the right person who would embrace Edinburgh’s literary tradition with grace and passion. For a day or two, I thought more than fondly of the idea. Considered it hard. I emailed the owners. And they emailed back. But it was never going to happen. I knew this deep down. Yet, the dream was there, it hung in the air, it floated around my heart and soul, it brought me joy, although it had always been clear it would remain forever unfulfilled. The dream, however, is still there. Why? The late Greek journalist, Philippos Syrigos said of his fondest yet most unattainable wishes: “I dare to tolerate the ashes of my unfulfilled dreams, for I may dream again.” This is why the dream of owning a bookstore in Edinburgh lingers. So that I may dream again.

Turning toward home, I returned to the main street, walking once again past the vacant corner space. I stood at the entranceway and squinted through the sun-drenched window. The space had been cleared out long ago, the walls needed painting, a small white waste basket tucked in the far corner overflowed with paper and discarded takeout coffee cups. The place had been neglected, left lonely, in need of love. It was a hollowed space waiting for renewal, for a dreamer to find it and take care for it. Considering this, I smiled and looked for a moment at the red and white For Rent sign on the building’s north window. At the risk of being overly dramatic, I thought of the last lines of Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises when Bret proclaims that she and the protagonist, Jake Barnes could have had a wonderful time as lovers if the circumstances had been different. And Jake responds in the last line of the novel, “Isn’t it pretty to think so?” That exchange is the essence of our unfulfilled dreams. It’s still pretty to think, to believe, to dream that our most unlikely imaginings—in another time and place—could have been different.