Every part, every creature of it, is a piece of the dreams and hopes of mankind. Therefore, it has no boundaries.
G’mork: Because people have begun to lose their hopes and forget their dreams. So the Nothing grows stronger.
Atreyu: What is the Nothing?
G’mork: It’s the emptiness that’s left. It’s like a despair, destroying this world.
People have been losing their hopes and dreams… and so the Nothing, the emptiness, it grows stronger. It grows, until it eclipses everything else– it’s the tar which suffocates our capacity to live and dream and love in risk-taking ways… and leaves us as small creatures barely daring to breathe or move, lest we fail in some way. Half-hearted creatures we are, indeed.
The trouble is that when we get into these habits of not dreaming, we forget what a dream looks like. We resign ourselves to the brokenness and numb the still, small voice enchanting us toward hope.
And then we tend to lose confidence in those places we don’t feel (much like we avoid a dinner party while the Novocaine wears off), until we don’t even remember what the echo of hope sounds like.
When we’ve lost our hopes and forgotten our dreams, sometimes the best way to work out the numbness is to help someone else accomplish his dream.
Whether you are grasping at the shadows of your own dreams or ready to work through the emptiness by helping someone reach her dream, I know some people who can help. The joy is contagious, and the hope is refreshing and the possibilities are full of life.
