Broken Idealists And Heaven On Earth

Every bitter person in this world is a broken idealist, and every idealist is broken. It is impossible for this to be otherwise. The idealist, sometimes called by detractors a dreamer, someone with their head “in the clouds,” sees how things should be. To an idealist, when he or she is young, this world seems a whole and wonderful place where people are loving and kind, animals are all our friends, and even the plants want to communicate and share with us.

An idealist is what I think could be called a personality type, meaning some people are idealists and others are not. If you are one, you were just born that way. It is a way of seeing the world that comes almost with its own operating system—the ability to see heaven on earth, and to see that first, before encountering reality. Eventually, the idealist stumbles into the “real world.”

This is a place where wars are fought for money, little kids are abused and destroyed by adults, animals are homeless and hungry, and wise ancient trees are mowed down for a few dollars’ profit. The blinders come off bit by bit. Dreams are replaced by wounds. The terrible hole between what should be and what is tears deeply into the dreamer’s soul. These wounds cannot easily heal, and an unhealed wound creates bitterness and anger.

The wounds demand answers. To encounter the dark side of existence and to be able to find a way to answer back to a world given over to darkness demands an inward journey. The vision of how things should be came from inside us, and the reply must also. The original vision, the ability to see heaven on earth, must be restored.

No politician, teacher, writer, or therapist can give us these answers. They must be unearthed inside our being, inside the very sanctum of the soul. The idealist must learn to ask the questions alone and to find that reconciliation comes from this process. Without this inner reconciliation, we can become bitter and cynical.

Do not be afraid to ask why. If we try to avoid the battle, or take in answers that do not live in us, that do not rekindle the vision we had to begin with, life becomes a burden you cannot carry. The idealist must pass through the fire, but at the end, if we persist, the vision will be restored. All that was lost is regained, and it cannot ever be lost again.

For me, I am still an idealist. I am with the visions in the moonlight, in the dancing shadows on the back porch when the wind shakes the trees. Idealism is my teacher in the lost places, in the darkness and moon shadows that come together by falling apart, breaking into something new out of the scattered, empty bits of chaos on a windy night.

I am waiting for the picture to form, the pieces to come together, and I will keep on waiting, keep following the vision, even if it never happens. I can still see heaven on earth.