Castles In The Air

Man is a pleasure loving animal. He wants diversity of enjoyments. His intelligence has certainly enabled to get a much greater variety of enjoyment that is open to animals. Music. poetry and science, football and baseball and alcohol and cigarettes are some from which people of different temperaments and mental make-up derive pleasure. There are still others who undertake hazardous journeys on the uncharted ocean. Some of foolishly expose themselves to frost-bite and other inclemencies of weather simply to be called conquerors of snowy peaks but the thrill-which these practical men get fails to stir their soul.
Even if they simply profess, it transports them to some ethereal pleasure, no sensible person who experienced the vast range of vicarious pleasures would believe them. In fact he who knows how to build castles in the airknow what the secret of perennial pleasure is, and which never gives one a feeling of satiety or frustration Much has been said in praise of the warriors who by their barbarian exploits conquered their so-called invincible enemies. But is it not a fact that these conquerors could never lead a life free from the fear of being over-run by some braver and more crafty warrior or soldier.
And this imaginary’ fear drove them from one inhuman act to another? Did not Aurangzeb subject his father and brothers to most inhuman treatment simply to become the unchallenged emperor of India? Also they had cared to know how unconquerable is the person who handles sword in his dreamland where no blood issued and where forces fall as easily a butterflies in a young boy’s net. Had they been contended with such conquests they might have not got a few pages in history read by bespectacled scholars, they would have, at least, remained unchallengeable masters of their domains.

After all what does it matter to a person whether people talk well or bad of him after he is dead Then why expose ourselves to the smoky hazardous battle-field? Is not our unconquerable fort which is not to be defended by death dealing weapons better, it is in this world that intrigues find little head way. No doubt achievements give us a sense of fulfillment and a feeling of joy. But this joy is seldom or never in proportion to our efforts. Naturally all our plans and the pains taken in executing them head to insignificant pleasure, Not only that, This pleasure is not lasting.
It is bound to result in frustration if success in one achievement is not followed by another. A part from that we may think that we have done something remarkable but others might not. This will prick the bubble of our pride and pleasure; the appreciation is whole hearted it might be only of section of people whose opinions we value the least, Then the fear of not being up to the mark also dissipate the pleasure we are likely to get from doing something concrete. And the period preceding our success is a period of great tension.
In fact what we do by building casdes on the earth is not to please overselves but to please others. We work as salves and not as masters of our souls. If still some think that there is no pleaSure in idle dreams let them think so, It is a matter of opinion, and if we claim to be civilize we should not grudge them the right to entertain worn ideas. Above all pleasure is completely a personal affair. When it becomes a community affair, as the pleasure from concrete achievement is, we may call it anything else, but to call it pleasure would be misnomer.
Nevertheless they who are earthy are contemptuous of day dreamers. The who ‘late and soon getting and spending law waste their powers and little see in nature that is ours are prone to have such feelings for those who make plans and entertain hopes that can never be realised. But is the dreams of such dreams to whom we owe much of colour and joy in the world. They make our drab )world permeate with whose who make life worth living. They wipe tears off every eye.
They are the angles who do not fear to tread or even to rush, whatever the attitude of the down-to-the dearth people may be. It is a fact that in all ages such dreamers have been dubbed cranks. Nevertheless, it is the cranks of one age who dream of a world different from the one in which they lived that mankind have, though at a slow pace, become different from what other species are. The discontent of such dreamers with the present make them to visualise a world where mankind would enjoy the ‘sweetness and light’ they unconsciously had been instruments.
Day dreamers have super-human power of withdrawing themselves from the tedium of boring routine. They by virtue of sanguine optimism have the capacity to neutralize the blind darkness of the realist. The hopes they entertain never meet with frustration, and they with unheated zeal go ahead from one pleasure to another. This pleasure is rather unknown to those who cannot abandon themselves completely. An egoist who is ambitious to become supreme lord of a cherished domain cannot known this pleasure.
Only the meet enter this kingdom. Obviously of all sorts of material gains which yelled nothing but disappointment, with a pipe in his mouth and a vacant glance in its eyes our dreamer is transported to that region where hatred ignoble reclaims give rise to love, humanism, broad mindedness and internationalism. And the picture of the world that emerges from such thinking is a thrilling and colourful pictures as are seen through a kaleidescope by a boy.