When
I was a boy, I saw Richard Kiley as Don Quixote perform “The
Impossible Dream” on TV. I think it was the Ed Sullivan show. I was
instantly captivated by the song and by the character of Don Quixote.
There was a children's version of the story (with illustrations) in
the school library, which I checked out and read over and over. The
whole idea of a brave knight tilting windmills he saw as giants was
just the sort of thing that fueled my imagination.
My
love of Don Quixote and “Man of La Mancha” continued throughout
my teen age years. Many thought me odd, that in an age of disco and
platform shoes, or “rock operas” such as “Hair” or “Jesus
Christ, Superstar” I would be so enamored of a musical from another
era. The reasons are quite personal and still are, but I have no
qualms sharing the result of those reasons.
Don
Quixote saw a world that had lost its sense of nobility, chivalry,
grace and honor. People were being so pragmatic as to only look to
themselves. They insisted on seeing things as they were, not as the
could be or were meant to be. Yes, in his book Cervantes intended to
address the idea of deception, that the ideals Don Quixote embraced
never existed in the form he believed them to exist.
However,
the play took a simpler approach: that Don Quixote, as deluded as he
was, represented the need for people to believe that there are things
worth fighting for no matter how impossible the odds. It presents the
ideal that if we believe in someone enough, that person will come to
believe in herself as well.
That
is how I try to live my life, believing that Creator offers us the
choice to embrace what Creator tells us:
"...whatever
things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just,
whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things
are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything
praiseworthy--meditate on these things." (Philippians 4:8)
This
is my own quest, perhaps an Impossible Dream: to be someone who
hopefully reminds others that there are virtues worth holding on to
no matter what the cost. That there are beauties in the world that
can go unseen, and so be destroyed, if we forget to meditate on them
and make them a part of our lives.
I
admit I fail at this quest more often than I succeed. Yet living in
Creator's mercy is something we all should seek to do, whether we are
sinner or saint, or both. Those times when I fail, Creator makes good
in many ways. The important thing is to keep trying, to be willing to
march into hell for a heavenly cause.
Or,
it could be the very possible dream that we should look upon others
not as “Aldonza”, a coarse woman of questionable virtue, but as
“Dulcinea” full of grace and beauty as Creator intends each of us
to be. Seek the beauty beneath appearances, beneath the stereotypes
we assign to those who look or think or speak or act or worship or
vote differently than we do.
In
my life, just as in Man of La Mancha, it seems people prefer I be
practical and down to earth in ways that strips us of our virtuous
ideals and mires us in the mentality that people like Don Quixote are
ridiculous anachronisms. They are living caricatures to be mocked and
derided for their old-fashioned ideas of virtue, honor and beauty are
things worth fighting to preserve. Most people seem to want to be the
Knight of Mirrors, intent on confronting the Don Quixotes of the
world with the "reality" that they are out of touch with
what the world is supposed to be like.
Many
times the Knight of Mirrors has confronted me and many times I have
been defeated. Each time I've come to better see the truth of it. The
very things that leads people to want to turn Don Quixote back into
Alonso Quixano is the reason why the world desparately needs Don
Quixote. People need those with Impossible Dreamers to remind them
that their own dreams may seem impossible, but really aren't if they
are willing to occasionally tilt at windmills and view others not was
they appear to the flesh and blood eye, but as Creator views them in
the spirit.
We
are all Don Quixotes and Dulcineas in His eyes.
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