In the Name of Love

A philosopher looks at our deepest emotions

by Aaron Ben-Zeév

All I Have to Do Is Dream

We walk in the dream, but dream no more

Published on January 8, 2012 by Aaron Ben-Zeév, Ph.D. in In the Name of Love

"I need you so that I could die
I love you so and that is why
Whenever I want you
All I have to do is dream." Andy Gibb and Victoria Principal

Andy Gibb, the Bee Gees singer, and Victoria Principal, the actress, sung the song that implies that lovers need merely to dream in order to sustain their love. It is evident that love requires more than just dreams to survive, but are dreams of any value in a romantic relationship? Apparently dreams were not sufficient to save Andy and Victoria's love and Andy's life. External circumstances were greater than their feelings for each other.
Let us begin from the beginning. There was a young couple who was madly in love. He was Andy Gibb, she was Victoria Principal. They dreamed of a life together. They were young, talented and so into each other. They worked together and shared everything... for a while. And when, in1981, they sung the Everly Brothers' song "All I Have to Do Is Dream," they WERE the song. Their short romance, during which they even became engaged, did not bring them much happiness. Their dream ended when cocaine came between them and Victoria left Andy, not long after they recorded this song. In 10 March 1988, after a long battle against cocaine addiction, which had weakened his heart, Andy Gibb died as a result of myocarditis (inflammation of the heart), just five days after his 30th birthday. Victoria came to his funeral but was asked to leave. However, at the moment in time that they sung about their dream, they were beautiful as their love. That moment will be theirs for eternity!
The risk involved in dreaming is if and when the dream ends, we might continue to yearn for it, and our sense of loss can grow even sharper as time passes. And when dreams end badly, our disappointment and misery can be substantial. As Otomo No Yakamochi wrote:
"Better never to have met you
In my dream
Than to wake and reach
For hands that are not there."

While an unfulfilled dream can cause a lingering sense of disappointment and sorrow, being over-occupied with our dreams carries the risk of dreaming our lives away, in the sense that it can reduce our chances of fully engaging in our more mundane but actual life. It can divert us from seeking to improve the life we have and the options that are realistically within our grasp. Dreaming of improving our current situation is always worthwhile as such dreams can become a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy. However, impossible dreams about replacing our current situation can be harmful. The distinction here is between dreaming about improving our current situation and dreaming about replacing it.
We all need our dreams to sustain us, provide us with goals, and help us to make our current life more meaningful and exciting, rather than simply be content with a life that seems meaningless and dull-a life about which we will have nothing to tell our grandchildren when we are old and weary. Our dreams might not be fulfilled, but they do have an impact on the form and flavor of who we are and what we do with our life. And there is, of course, always the option that our dreams might come to pass. Lovers often maintain that they are living their dreams with their beloved. Hope may be the dreams of those who are awake, but often these are very realistic dreams.
There seems to be a third option (suggest by Nancy Sinatra), which is to have both the dream and our real life:
"You only live twice or so it seems,
One life for yourself and one for your dreams.
You drift through the years and life seems tame,
Till one dream appears and love is its name.
And love is a stranger who'll beckon you on,
Don't think of the danger or the stranger is gone.
This dream is for you, so pay the price.
Make one dream come true, you only live twice."

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Pursuing our dreams in order to fulfill them may be dangerous as reality can shatter our dreams, but ignoring our dreams may lead us not merely into a tame and dull life, but to a life full of regret for the road not taken, the road of love.
Is it worth paying the price of living a loveless life because we gave up on our dreams and hopes and followed a prescribed life course?
Dreams, which often involve positive illusions, are significant not only in finding genuine love, but also in maintaining the love we have. Indeed, people who are in love for a prolonged period of time can maintain the idealized initial perception of their beloved for the whole period. Enhancing a partner's qualities seems critical for maintaining the belief that this partner is the "right one" and for protecting the relationship from doubt. This attitude is not that of faking, but rather of "making believe," or an "as if" attitude.
Profound illusions can easily generate disappointment, which may ruin the entire relationship. A love based on the false premise that all of the partner's traits are perfect will inevitably prove to be fragile. In fact, spouses who entertain such a premise put their partners in the uncomfortable position of having to live up to an identity that by definition they can never uphold. There is evidence that the contrast between high expectations of intimacy and disappointing realities leads to suicide.
Today, dreams are no longer the major tool for imagining a better situation. Cyberspace has become more efficient for such a purpose. Cyberspace allows two lovers to feel as if they are directly connected-as if their bodies do not interfere, allowing their hearts to be in direct communication; they feel as if their souls are melting. As one woman wrote, "I don't know what it's like to touch this man, yet he has touched me a thousand times in my dreams." People often describe their online relationship as "dreaming while awake." People delight in these dreams; as another woman wrote: "If this is a dream, let me sleep forever." Contrary, however, to this woman's wishes, a life of mere dreams and sleep are dangerous because they are not connected to reality. Online romantic relationships are valuable when they complement, rather than replace offline relationships. The value of dreams, as well as that of Cyberspace, is that they are interspersed with reality.
Andy Gibb and Victoria Principal could not fulfill their dream as the fatal circumstances of Andy's drug addiction shattered the dream. But dreams do come true and they are valuable even if they are not fully fulfilled. We just must make sure that our dreams are somehow connected to reality. Each of us needs a moderate amount of dreams, none of which are too far from the world in which we live.
The above considerations can be encapsulated in the following statement that a lover might express: "Darling, my precious princess, we are still dreaming about something that is not here, but if we keep dreaming, we will soon walk in the dream but dream no more."

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Aaron Ben-Zeév, Ph.D., former President of the University of Haifa, is Professor of Philosophy. His books include: In the Name of Love: Romantic Ideology and its Victims. more...