"We must keep dreaming, for dreams are what we use to celebrate life."  This is a line from Giacomo Puccini's opera La Boheme, which he wrote in the late nineteenth century.  Do not we all have dreams?  Do not we all use our hopes?  Do not we all dream to magnify our joy of life, to move ourselves forward to more good times as we live out our days?

    Absolutely.  Alone among the animals, human beings have the capacity to think beyond themselves, to imagine beyond their boundaries, to summon thoughts that do not seem logical at the moment, thoughts and longings that move them to strike ever deeply into the many unknowns and possibilities that life lays before them.  To celebrate life constantly.

    Dreams are the essence of life.  Remove them, and we implode and crater; we become less than human.  Ironically yet so fittingly, however, continuing to dream also leads to great frustration and angst.  When we cannot fulfill our dreams, we may crater, too.  But better that we dream than not, for as Puccini's character reminds us, the moment we stop dreaming, we stop living.

    Bottom line, we cease to recognize the power of the living imagination from which we have come.