Dreamers, Thinkers, Visionaries

My friend's son Lee came home recently after almost 20 years abroad. Lee is now a top software-development executive at a leading U.S. computer company. It was interesting to see how the boy who was once thought as "peculiar" had grown to be a very solid and successful person.

I remember how worried Lee's mother was when she noticed that the boy was spending too much time being alone. He would play all by himself and spend long hours on things that the other kids were not interested in. Lee was born out of wedlock and grew up never having seen his father. Many thought, then, that this was the reason for the boy's unusual behavior. And relatives and friends were alarmed.

As a teenager, I myself also relished the times when I could be alone. I loved being sent away to gather firewood in the woods by the seafront. I would go alone. Then I would slip into a world all my own. I never felt lonely by myself; there were a lot of things to keep me occupied. Those were my times for daydreaming.

Much later, on I realized that it is only when one is alone that he can make a real acquaintance with himself. One's self-concept is based mainly on what goes on in his mind, heart, spirit and imagination-free from external distractions. And knowledge of one's self is, in a sense, the most important knowledge one can have; the rest, like those in books or in other people's heads, don't count as much. An ancient counsel says, "Know thyself." You can never know anybody else in quite the same way.

However, in a busy city like ours, opportunities to think - alone and undisturbed - are not easy to find. Our homes and offices do not allow a moment for quiet reflection. Even in the outskirts, most of our houses today rumble with the noise of electrical appliances and tools. Outside, the nearby woods are disappearing, our beaches are buzzing with seacrafts and watersports machines, our rivers are drying up and no longer give that relaxing sound of flowing water.

We have grown so accustomed to the barrage of noise and human activity that we accept it as inescapable. Many of us, the youth especially, have even come to regard thoughtful solitude as unnatural. It seems we now dread the company of our own selves.

Perhaps no parents would encourage their child to spend time just gazing at the sky, daydreaming. Many people today think that young dreamers grow up to become losers. It's a modern-day virtue to be eternally busy, for one to be always on the go, without ever stopping to think where he is going.

A daydreaming kid is often prodded to meaningless activity by nervous adults who fear that solitude is somehow dangerous. A boy who sits by the window absorbed with the many watermark images on the glass pane is hurriedly sent out to play with the other children, for fear that he may become a loner or anti-social. At school, the kids are trained mainly in developing social skills; little importance, if at all, is given to self-acquaintance. But it is as dangerous for young people to grow up with no practice in probing their inner selves.

Life is a constantly changing order of things that only a person who deeply knows himself can prudently decide which of the swiftly shifting social trends and concepts to embrace and which to reject. One's degree of knowledge of his own inner yearnings will determine the quality of his life choices.

True, we cannot suppress our innate need to be with others of our kind. There are, indeed, special pleasures in each other's company. But too much company can make one lose that sense of identity. An overly gregarious young person will easily succumb to peer- pressure, the single most important factor in juvenile delinquency. On the other hand, it's the guy with a well-founded personality who is always sought-after for ideas, become a leader, and be truly valued as a friend.

We each need moments for soul-searching. The ideal venue for this is in the peaceful encirclement of nature. In spite of the environmental degradation, there can still be found places conducive for meditation. For instance, under a cool shed of a tree at the park, or even beside an artificial fountain or pond in the shopping-mall complex.

Yet, if there are no such places around, there is a place much closer by for solitude in the mind. One only needs to decide to take time to be alone and to have the ability to momentarily shut oneself off from the world, at will. With a little practice, one can learn to be alone even in a crowd.

We must check our growing dislike for solitude. If we don't recover our collective appetite for being alone, the next generations may eventually lose the ability for fresh ideas for making life a meaningful, exhilarating and satisfying experience.

At Lee's homecoming party last week, all the casual chitchats came to a halt when someone asked the 27-year-old bachelor about his job. In simple, to-the-point words, Lee described the mind-boggling scope of his official function. He also explained how the computer and a corollary technology, the internet, have made life much easier for millions around the world. My jaw dropped as I listened, amazed how one head could hold so many great thoughts!

Mankind need daydreamers-thinkers who cannot be overwhelmed by the monstrous problems peculiar to their time; visionaries who, in their minds, see the full pattern of life's labyrinth and point to the rest of us the way out.