Dream Deferred

Langston Hughes asked, “What happens to a dream deferred?”¹

I reread his poem today because I couldn’t remember the answer. I knew dreams could “dry up like raisins in the sun.” But I wanted an answer. I want to give someone whose dreams have been deferred, whose dreams have been shattered, whose dreams have been destroyed something to cling to. I want to give hope. When I try to look through the lens of their eyes, hope doesn’t seem an option.

Most of us base our future on what has happened in the past. If bad things happen to us, and we survive the trauma and things get better, then we can anticipate that things will get better the next time something goes wrong.

But when your life has been a series of trauma, when the people who were supposed to take care of you when you were a child didn’t, when the people who were supposed to love you abused you instead, when the people who were supposed to support you, care for you, teach you and help you cope with life called you crazy and blamed all of their bad luck, misfortune, and mistakes on you, it is hard to see anything but despair.

Then, if you dare to dream a little, dare to trust a little, dare to aspire a little, and wake up one morning alone, broke and broken, the possibility has disappeared.

But if once again you dare to dream big and work to get yourself to a place where you can restart your life, you cling to a little hope—a little hope that you try to encourage to grow.

What happens then when you find yourself in a nightmare, not of your own making, and you cannot see anything but the fact that this dream, too, the big dream, the dream that, with hard work, was going to allow you life, hope and a future, what do you do when that dream dies, and all you can see is the nightmare?

What happens to a dream deferred, Mr. Hughes? You suggest it may explode.

I always thought that meant that the people whose dream was deferred would stand up and rebel. They would stand up and say we won’t take it anymore… But sometimes. Sometimes. Sometimes I think it just dies.

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But then- I found a rebuttal of what I wrote by Mr. Hughes…here it is in part. Thank you, Mr. Hughes.

Dreams

²
By Langston Hughes 1920

Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die,
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.

1

The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes pg 373 Copyright 1994 by the Estate of Langston Hughes

2

The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes pg 32 Copyright 1994 by the Estate of Langston Hughes