Dreams vs. Reality

By Frank Absher

On a recent visit to New York, I paused to do some mental comparisons and it made me realize that the idealism of youth is usually transformed over the years to a cynicism that comes with age.

And just as young people who pursue their idealism only to find themselves smacked by reality, we older people should push aside the cynicism and recognize the occasional glimmers of hope life tosses at us.

Alicia Keys* recently penned a grammatically absurd set of lyrics for a song recorded with Jay-Z that described a youthful, starry-eyed look at NYC:

“Concrete jungle where dreams are made of,
There’s nothing you can’t do,
Now you’re in New York,
These streets will make you feel brand new,
The lights will inspire you.
Let’s hear it for New York.”

I heard Ms. Keys gushing in an interview on a London radio station about how this wonderful city had inspired her to write those lyrics, yet some of the lyrics provided by Jay-Z in their hit recording paint a contradictory picture:

“Eight million stories out there, and they’re naked,
City is a pity, half of y’all won’t make it.”

Talk about those dreams that Ms. Keys describes to the guy behind the counter in the deli who was beaten down by the city after he came in from outside to go to college, or the girl behind the desk at the hotel who doesn’t have time to go to school to follow her dream because it costs so much to live there.

I remember when a radio gig in New York was considered a trip to the promised land. As I rode in the cab listening to the radio, the broadcast product I heard was as bland and lifeless as it is in most of the rest of the country.

New York, it seems, can be just as miserable as anyplace else. It is not Nirvana, even though a large number of the inhabitants there think the world revolves around their city.

All of us have dreams. Those of us who set out to make a career in broadcasting had dreams. Most of us had our hopes shattered when we learned that the media careers to which we had given so much of ourselves were worthless in the long term. Like the guy behind the deli counter in New York, we had high hopes, we gave a lot of ourselves, we worked hard, only to realize that dreams are sometimes nothing more than just dreams.

But when reality takes hold and we face life’s facts, there’s nothing that says we have to wallow in failure. The scars one gets from falling while riding a bike may still be visible, but they’re also symbolic of how we learned how to avoid falling.

Adjusting dreams to fit reality is a sign of maturity.

Like the Tin Man, Lion and Scarecrow, recognition of reality allows us to move forward. Living with only the vision of a dream, especially one that’s not rooted in reality, will take us on a path down the yellow brick road headed straight for the concrete jungle.

*Six other people are also listed as writers of the song.

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