There are times when our dreams are all we have: life as we wish it could be rather than what it is. My own example of Living the Dream was during brief pauses in retail sales in a furniture and floor coverings store in Melbourne’s CBD. Earlier in my teenage years I had worked on dairy farms, and after being besieged by frantic, demanding customers, my mind would drift to misty early mornings when I would go out with a cattle dog and call in the cows for milking. (If you think that comparing a herd of cows to a stampede of frantic women — all anxious for a morning’s “LIMITED BARGAIN!” is a bit much — all I can say is that you had to be there!)
Gone was the memory of shovelling cow dung into heaps (not to mention ducking streams of the same from rear ends in springtime, when the grass was at its greenest and at its freshest). Then cleaning the separator, and then driving the separated skim milk to the pigsty and being met by loud grunts and squeals and then pouring the milk into troughs in which the pigs had (you don’t want to know). I’ll skip over other things that would spoil your breakfast.
Then came a holiday and an invitation to spend a few days on a farm with an elderly couple. Not a working farm, just a few acres. I could hardly wait! After a few days, though, I could hardly wait to get back into the Big City! Then I realised that I had used the best parts of my Dream Years on the farm to help get me through my traumatic times dealing with demanding customers chasing bargains.