I Can’t Help It, I’m an Optimist Posted by Mike Dreams (Michael A. Hannah) on 03/04/10 | Filed under Features, A Dreamer's Perspective

Every once in a while, I like to explore some of the philosophical ideas I have towards life. This is one of those pieces, just to spawn some thinking and maybe some feedback on your take on life and your approach towards it on a daily.

A long conversation last night with a friend spawned me to talk about this today topic today. Everyone knows I refer to me as a "dreamer". Shoot, I named my debut album "Dreamer's Poetry" and changed my name to an alias (Mike Dreams) that literally tells you what I do. I began thinking about why I did this and what it all really means. Why am I so optimistic about life and why do I feel you should be too?

To me, we are living in a generation that doesn't settle, even when everything in life may tell us we have to; even if everything would actually go "better" if we did. The older generation may equate this with laziness or a flawed perception of reality, but the fact is, without people like this, we wouldn't have some of the greatest things we have nowadays. Even things that we use every day and need to use to survive started out as dreams. Alexander Graham Bell was at his crib dreaming about a day when he could talk to someone that wasn't even remotely near him in location. I guarantee there were people who thought he was a fool and ridiculed him heavily. Had he listened to the haters, we wouldn't have something that we today call (see what I did there?) the telephone. I could name a list of plenty more things, but you get the gist. Maybe that will help people understand why myself and many others alike feel they have the address the "haters" so much. A lot of times, the people who hide behind being realists are just pessimists in disguise. They don't want to see it happen because they couldn't make it happen. They envy the joy you gain from striving to be something more and elevate the world. With so many people like this in the world, you can't help to NOT be an over-optimist, to combat all to the pessimism, concealed or obvious, that others are emitting into the atmosphere.

Why am I talking about this? Well, I want people to understand how I think a little bit more. What you may perceive from me as being out of tune with reality or even arrogance is simply because I feel like I need to believe in what I'm doing to the fullest, or there is no point is believing at all. I love my life and I don't plan on leaving it anytime soon, but to wake up and not be where you feel you need to be and just settle for that monotonous routine for the rest of your life without trying to do something about is not what life is about; at least not to me. Maybe it's foolish. Maybe I'll never reach what I'm stretching my arms out for in my lifetime. But if I don't, at least I had something to do along the way. If I'm not reaching for that, I might as well not be living at all then. #NoEmo.

But seriously, for me, being an optimist and a dreamer is putting good use to this additional 24 hours that God has granted me to wake up and exist on the Earth. So when I speak like I'm crazy, or not in reality, it's not because I'm not in tune with what's real and what's really going on. It's because the fuel for my vitality is to be an optimistic. The drive is to know that me walking this mile home in the freezing cold after doing a show where hardly anyone showed up will one day be a moment I can look back on before I take the stage in front of 20,000 strong. Those people who shut down their entire "dreamer" side because of what life has handed them will eventually go insane. As I said before, "sanity in life is when you have the correct balance of reality and dreams; this allows you to know what you can achieve." How will you ever know if you aren't open and optimistic enough to go find out. Stop being a coward and stop playing it safe. The worse that can happen is that you have to go back to the drawing board again the next day. As long as you're alive, a new day is another day to work towards what you REALLY want in life. I don't plan to "settle" until I'm settling 6 feet under the ground in a pine box; and that's real talk. Just something to think about today. I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend.