shattered dreams essay

Draft of Chapter X, "Shattered Dreams"

Author:  King, Martin Luther, Jr.

Date:  July 1, 1962 to March 31, 1963 ?

Location:  Atlanta, Ga. ?

Genre:  Sermon

Topic:  Martin Luther King, Jr. - Career in Ministry

Martin Luther King, Jr. - Education

King blends thoughts on unmet expectations from preachers Frederick Meek, Leslie Weatherhead, Howard Thurman, and J. Wallace Hamilton in this sermon. He writes that African Americans have “long dreamed of freedom,” and asserts, “Moreover, through our suffering in this oppressive prison and our non-violent struggle to get out of it, we may give the kind of spiritual dynamic to western civilization that it so desperately needs to survive.” As in the version of this sermon he preached at Dexter in 1959, King elaborates on the apostle Paul’s unfulfilled desire to travel to Spain. 1 He asks the congregation to learn from Paul’s “unwanted and unfortunate circumstance…in developing the capacity to accept the finite disappointment and yet cling to the infinite hope.”

“When I take my journey into Spain, I will come unto you.” Romans 15:24.

Our sermon today brings us face to face with one of the most agonizing problems of human experience. Very few, if any, of us are able to see all of our hopes fulfilled. So many of the hopes and promises of our mortal days are unrealized. Each of us, like Shubert, begins composing a symphony that is never finished. 2 There is much truth in George Frederick Watts’ imaginative portrayal of Hope in his picture entitled Hope. He depicts Hope as seated atop our planet, but her head is sadly bowed and her fingers are plucking one unbroken harp string. 3 Who has not had to face the agony of blasted hopes and shattered dreams?

If we turn back to the life of the Apostle Paul, we find a very potent example of this problem of disappointed hopes. 4 In his letter to the Christians at Rome Paul wrote: “When I take my journey into Spain, I will come unto you.” It was one of Paul’s greatest hopes to go to Spain, the edge of the then known world, where he could further spread the Christian gospel. And on his way to Spain, he planned to visit that valiant group of Christians in Rome, the capital city of the world. He looked forward to the day that he would have personal fellowship with those people whom he greeted in his letter as “Christians in the household of Caesar.” 5 The more he thought about it the more his heart exuded with joy. All of his attention now would be turned toward the preparation of carrying the gospel to the city of Rome with its many gods, and to Spain, the end of the then known world. 6

But notice what happened to this noble dream and this glowing hope that gripped Paul’s life. He never got to Rome in the sense that he had hoped. He went there only as a prisoner and not as a free man. He spent his days in that ancient city in a little prison cell, held captive because of his daring faith in Jesus Christ. Neither was Paul able to walk the dusty roads of Spain, nor see its curvacious slopes, nor watch its busy coast life, because he died a martyr’s death in Rome. 7 The story of Paul’s life was the tragic story of a shattered dream and a blasted hope.

Life is full of this experience. There is hardly anyone here this morning who has not set out for some distant Spain, some momentous goal, some glorious realization, only to find that we had to settle for much less. We were never able to walk as free men through the streets of our Rome. Instead we were forced to live our lives in a little confining cell which circumstance had built around us. 8 Life seems to have a fatal flaw, and history seems to have an irrational and unpredictable streak. Ultimately we all die not having received what was promised. Our dreams are constantly tossed and blown by staggering winds of disappointment. 9

Mahatma Gandhi, after long years of struggle for independence, dreamed of a united India, only to see that dream trampled over by a bloody religious war between the Hindus and the Moslems which led to the division of India and Pakistan. 10 Woodrow Wilson dreamed of a league of nations, but he died with the dream shattered. The Negro slaves of America longed for freedom with all their passionate endeavors, but many died without receiving it. Jesus, prayed in the garden of Gethsemane that the cup might pass, but he had to drink it to the last bitter dregs. 11 The Apostle Paul prayed fervently for the “thorn” to be removed from his flesh, but he went to his grave with this desire unfulfilled. 12 Shattered dreams! Blasted hopes! This is life.

What does one do under such circumstances? This is a central question, for we must determine how to live in a world where our highest hopes are not fulfilled.

It is quite possible for one to seek to deal with this problem by distilling all his frustrations into a core of bitterness and resentment of spirit. The persons who follow this path develop a hardness of attitude and a coldness of heart. They develop a bitter hatred for life itself. In fact, hate becomes the dominant force in their lives. They hate God, they hate the people around them, and they hate themselves. Since they can’t corner God or life, they take out their vengeance on other people. If they are married they are extremely cruel to their mate. If they have children, they treat them in the most inhuman manner. When they are not beating them, they are screaming at them; and when they are not screaming at them, they are cursing them. In short, they are mean. 13 They love nobody and they demand no love. They trust no one and do not expect anyone to trust them. They find fault in everything and everybody. They always complain. You have seen people like this. They are cruel, vindictive and merciless. 14

The terrible thing about this approach is that it poisons the soul and scars the personality. It does more harm to the person who harbours it than to anyone else. Many physical ailments are touched off by bitter resentment. Medical science has revealed that many cases of arthritis, gastric ulcer and asthma are caused by the long continuance of emotional poison in the mind. They are often psychosomatic, that is to say, they show in the body, but they are caused in the mind. There can be no doubt that resentment is a harmful reaction to disappointment and capable of setting up actual physical illness. 15

Another possible reaction to the experience of blasted hopes is for the individuals to withdraw completely into themselves. They become absolute introverts. They allow no one to come into their lives and they refuse to go out to others. Such persons give up in the struggle of life. They lose the zest for living. They attempt to escape the disappointments of life by lifting their minds to a transcendent realm of cold indifference. Detachment is the word that may describe them. They are too unconcerned to love and they are too passionless to hate. They are too detached to be selfish and too lifeless to be unselfish. They are too indifferent to experience moments of joy and they are too cold to experience moments of sorrow. 16 In short, such people are neither dead nor alive; they merely exist. Their eyes behold the beauties of nature, and yet they do not see them. Their ears are subjected to the majestic sounds of great music, and yet they do not hear it. Their hands gently touch a charming little baby, and yet they do not feel him. There is nothing of the aliveness of life left in them; there is only the dull motion of bare existence. Their disappointed hope leads them to a crippling cynicism. With Omar Khayyam they would affirm:

“The Worldly Hope men set their Hearts upon turns to ashes—or it prospers; and anon, Like Snow upon the Desert’s dusty Face Lighting a little Hour or two-is gone.” 17

One can very easily see the danger of this reaction. It is, at bottom, based on an attempt to escape life. Psychiatrists tell us the more individuals attempt to engage in these escapes from reality the thinner and thinner their personalities become until ultimately they split. This is one of the causal sources of the schiophrenic personality.

Another way that people respond to life’s disappointments is to adopt a philosophy of fatalism. This is the idea that whatever happens must happen, and that all events are determined by necessity. Fatalism implies something foreordained and inescapable. The people who subscribe to The this philosophy follow a course of absolute resignation. They resign themselves to what they consider their fate. They see themselves as little more than helpless orphans thrown out in the terrifying immensities of space. Since they believe that man has no freedom, they seek neither to deliberate nor to make decisions. They wait passively for external forces to deliberate and decide for them. They never actively seek to change their circumstances, since they believe that all circumstances, like the Greek tragedies, are controlled by irresistible and foreordained forces. Often the fatalists are very religious people who see God as the determiner and controller of destiny. Everything, they feel, is God’s will, however evil it happens to be. This view is expressed in the verse of one of our Christian hymns:

“Though dark my path and sad my lot, Let me be still and murmur not, But breathe the prayer divinely taught, Thy will be done.” 18

So the fatalists go through life with the conviction that freedom is a myth. They end up with a paralyzing determinism, saying that we are

“But helpless Pieces of the Game He plays Upon this chequer-board of Night and Days,

and that we need not trouble our minds about the future— “Who knows?” Nor about the past, for

“The Moving Finger writes, and having writ moves on… Neither tears not wit can cancel out a line of it.” 19

For one to sink in the quicksands of this type of fatalism is both intellectually and psychologically stiffling. Since freedom is a part of the essence of man, the fatalist, in his denial of freedom, becomes a puppet and not a person. He is right in his conviction that there is no absolute freedom, and that freedom always operates within the framework of predestined structure. Thus a man is free to go north from Atlanta to Washington or South from Atlanta to Miami. But he is not free to go north to Miami or South to Washington. Freedom is always within destiny. But there is freedom. We are both free and destined. Freedom is the act of deliberating, deciding and responding within our destined nature. Even if destiny prevents our going to some attractive Spain, there still remains in us the capacity to take this disappointment, to {answer} it, to make our individual response to it, to stand up to it and do something with it. Fatalism doesn’t see this. It leaves the individual stymied and helplessly inadequate for life.

But even more, fatalism is based on a terrible conception of God. It sees everything that happens, evil and good alike, as the will of God. Any healthy religion will rise above the idea that God wills evil. It is true that God has to permit evil in order to preserve the freedom of man. But this does not mean that he causes it. That which is willed is intended, and the idea that God intends for a child to be born blind, or that God gives cancer to this person and inflicts insanity upon another is rank heresy. Such a false idea makes God into a devil rather than a loving Father. So fatalism is a tragic and dangerous way to deal with the problem of unfulfilled dreams. 20

What, then, is the answer? We must accept our unwanted and unfortunate circumstance and yet cling to a radiant hope. The answer lies in developing the capacity to accept the finite disappointment and yet cling to the infinite hope. In speaking of acceptance, I do not mean the grim, bitter acceptance of those who are fatalistic. I mean the kind of acceptance that Jeremiah achieved as expressed in the words, “this is my grief and I must bear it.” 21

This means sitting down and honestly confronting your shattered dream. Don’t follow the escapist method of trying “to put it out of your mind.” This will lead to repression which is always psychologically injurious. Place it at the forefront of your mind and stare daringly at it. Then ask yourself, “how can I transform this liability into an asset?” “How can I, confined in some narrow Roman cell, unable to reach life’s Rome {Spain}, transform this cell from a dungeon of shame to a haven of redemptive suffering.” Almost anything that happens to us can be woven into the purposes of God. It may lengthen our cords of sympathy. It may break our self-centered pride. Even the cross, which was willed by wicked men, was woven by God into the redemption of the world.

Many of the world’s most influential characters have transformed their thorns into a crown. Charles Darwin was almost always physically ill. Robert Louis Stevenson was inflicted with tuberculosis. Helen Keller was blind and deaf. 22 But they did not respond to these conditions with bitter resentment and grim fatalism. Rather they stood up to life, and, through the exercise of a dynamic will, transformed a negative into a positive. 23 [ George Frideric ] Handel confronted the most difficult and trying circumstances in his life. Says his biographer: “His health and his fortunes had reached the lowest ebb. His right side had become paralyzed, and his money was all gone. His creditors seized him and threatened him with imprisonment. For a brief time he was tempted to give up the fight—but then he rebounded again to compose the greatest of his inspirations, the epic “Messiah.” So, the “Hallelujah Chorus” was born, not in a desired Spain, but in a narrow cell of undesirable circumstances.

Wanting Spain and getting a narrow cell in a Roman prison, how familiar an experience that is! But to take the Roman prison, the broken, the left-over of a disappointed expectation, and make of it an opportunity to serve God’s purpose, how much less familiar that is! 24 Yet, powerful living has always involved such a victoryover one’s own soul and one’s situation.

We as a people have long dreamed of freedom, but we are still confined to an oppressive prison of segregation and discrimination. 25 Must we respond to this disappointed hope with bitterness and cynicism? Certainly not, for this will only distort and poison our personality. Must we conclude that the existence of segregation is a part of the will of God, and thereby resign ourselves to the fate of oppression. Of course not, for such a course would be blasphemy, because it attributes to God something that should be attributed to the devil. Moreover, to accept passively an unjust system is to cooperate with that system; thereby the oppressed become as evil as the oppressor. Our most fruitful course of action will be to stand up with a courageous determination, moving on non-violently amid obstacles and setbacks, facing disappointments and yet clinging to the hope. It will be this determination and final refusal to be stopped that will eventually open the door of fulfillment. While still in the prison of segregation we must ask, “How can I turn this liability into an asset?” It is possible that, recognizing the necessity of suffering, we can make of it a virtue. To suffer in a righteous cause is to grow to our humanity’s full stature. 26 If only to save ourselves from bitterness, we need the vision to see the ordeals of this generation as the opportunity to transfigure ourselves and American society. Moreover, through our suffering in this oppressive prison and our non-violent struggle to get out of it, we may give the kind of spiritual dynamic to western civilization that it so desperately needs to survive.

Of course some of us will die having not received the promise of freedom. But we must continue to move on. On the one hand we must accept the finite disappointment, but in spite of this we must maintain the infinite hope. This is the only way that we will be able to live without the fatigue of bitterness and the drain of resentment.

This was the secret of the survival of our slave foreparents. Slavery was a low, dirty, inhuman business. When the slaves were taken from Africa, they were cut off from their family ties, and chained to ships like beasts. There is nothing more tragic than to cut a person off from his family, his language, and his roots. 27 In many instances, during the days of slavery, husbands were cut off from wives and children were separated from parents. The women were often forced to satisfy the biological urges of the master himself, and the slave husband was powerless to intervene. 28 Yet, in spite of these inexpressible cruelties, our foreparents continued to live and develop. Even though they could expect nothing the next morning but the long rows of cotton, the sweltering heat and the rawhide whip of the overseer, they continued to dream of a better day. 29 They accepted the fact of slavery and yet clung to the hope of freedom. Their hope continued even amid a seemingly hopeless situation. They took the pessimism of life and filtered it in their own souls and fashioned it into a creative optimism that gave them strength to carry on. With their bottomless vitality they continually transformed the darkness of frustration into the light of hope. They had the “courage to be.” 30

When I first flew from New York to London, it was in the days of the propellor type aircraft. The flight over took 9 ½ hours. (The jets can make the flight in six hours.) On returning to the States from London I discovered that the flying time would be twelve hours and a half. This confused me for the moment. I knew that the distance returning to New York was the same as the distance from New York to London. Why this difference of three hours, I asked myself. Soon the pilot walked through the plane to greet the passengers. As soon as he got to me I raised the question of the difference in flight time. His answer was simple and to the point. “You must understand something about the winds,” he said. “When we leave New York,” he continued, “the winds are in our favor; we have a strong tail wind. When we return to New York from London, the winds are against us; we have a strong headwind.” And then he said, “don’t worry though, these four engines are fully capable of battling the winds, and even though it takes three hours longer we will get to New York.” Well, life is like this. There are times when the winds are in our favor—moments of joy, moments of great triumph, moments of fulfillment. But there are times when the winds are against us, times when strong head winds of disappointment and sorrow beat unrelentingly upon our lives. 31 We must decide whether we will allow the winds to overwhelm us or whether we will journey across life’s mighty Atlantic with our inner spiritual engines equipped to go in spite of the winds. This refusal to be stopped, this “courage to be,” this determination to go on living “inspite of,” is the God in man. He who has made this discovery knows that no burden can overwhelm him and no wind of adversity can blow his hope away. He can stand anything that can happen to him.

Certainly the Apostle Paul had this type [of] “courage to be.” His life was a continual round of disappointments. He started out for Spain and ended up in a Roman prison. He wanted to go to Bithynia but ended up in Troas. 32 Everywhere he turned he faced broken plans. He was jailed, mobbed beaten and shipwrecked in his gallant program of preaching spreading the gospel of Christ. But he did not allow these conditions to overwhelm him. 33 “I have learned,” he said, “in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content.” 34 Paul did not mean that he had learned to be complacent. There is nothing in the life of Paul which could characterize him as a complacent man. [ Edward ] Gibbon in his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire says, “Paul has done more to promote the idea of freedom and liberty than any man who set foot on western soil.” This does not sound like a complacent man. So Paul is not saying that he had learned to dwell in a valley of stagnant complacency. Neither is he saying that he had learned to resign himself to some tragic fate. Paul meant that he had learned to stand up amid the disappointment of life without despairing. He had discovered the distinction between a tranquil soul and the outward accidents of circumstance. He had learned to live from within instead of from without. 35

The person who makes this magnificent discovery will, like Paul, be the recipient of true peace. Indeed, he will possess that peace which passeth all understanding. 36 The peace which the world understands is that which comes with the removal of the burden or the pain. It is a peace which only comes on beautiful summer days, when the skies are clear and the sun shines in all of its scintilating beauty. It is a peace that comes when the pocketbook is filled and the body has no aches or pains. It is a peace that can only come by reaching the Spain of one’s hope and staying out of the filthy jail. But this is not true peace. Real peace is something inward, a tranquility of soul amid terrors of trouble. It is inner calm amid the howland rage of outer storm. True peace is like a hurricane. Around its circomference rages howling and jostling winds of destruction, while at its center all is serenely quiet. This is why true peace passeth all understanding. It is easy to understand how one can have peace when everything is going right, and one is “up and in.” But it is difficult to understand how one can have unruffled tranquility when he is “down and out,” when the burden still lies heavy upon one’s shoulders, when the pain still throbs annoyingly in one's body, when the prison cell still surrounds one with unbearable agony, and when the disappointment is inescapably real. True peace is peace amid story, tranquility amid disaster. It is a calm that exceeds all description and all explanation. 37

Peace was Jesus' chief legacy. He said, “peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you.” 38 This peace is there for us to iner inherit if we will only accept it through faith. Paul at Philippi, body beaten and bloody, incarcerated in a dark and desolate dungeon, feet chained and spirit tired, could joyously sing the songs of Zion at midnight. 39 The early Christians, with the fierce faces of hungry lions standing before them and the excruciating pain of the chopping block only a step away, could face these pending disasters rejoicing that they had been dem deemed worthy to suffer disgrace for the sake of Christ. The Negro slaves, standing tiredly in the sizzling heat with the whip lashes freshly etched on their backs could sing triumphantly, “By and by I’m gwin to lay down this heavy load.” 40 This was peace amid storm. 41

In the final analysis our ability to deal creatively with shattered dreams and blasted hopes will be determined by the extent of our faith in God. A genuine faith will imbue us with the conviction that there is a God beyond time and a Life beyond Life. Thus we know that we are not alone in any circumstance, however dismal and catastrophic it may be. God dwells with us in life’s confining and oppressive cells. And even if we die there having not received the earthly promise, he will walk with us down that mysterious road called death, and lead us at last to that indescribable city that he has prepared for us. Let us never feel that God’s creative power is exhausted by this earthly life, and his majestic love is locked within the limited walls of time and space. This would be a strongly irrational universe if God did not bring about an ultimate wedding of virtue and fulfillment. This would be an absurdly absurdly meaningless universe if death turned out to a blind alley leading the human race into a state of nothingness. God, through Christ has taken the sting from death, and it no longer has dominion over us. 42 This earthly life is merely an embryonic prelude to a new awakening, and death is an open door that leads us into life eternal.

With this faith we can accept nobly what cannot be changed, and face disappointments and sorrow with an inner poise. We will have the power to absorb the most excruciating pain without losing our sense of hope. We will then know that in life and death, God will take care of us. 43

“Be not dismayed, what-ere betide,  God will take care of you.  Beneath his wings of live abide, God will take care of you.”  “Thro’ days of toil when heart doth fail, God will take care of you. When dangers fierce your path assail, God will take care of you.”  “God will take care of you, through every day, “O’re all the way. He will take care of you, God will take care of you.” 44

{But helpless pieces of the game he plays upon this chequer Board of Nights and days.} 45

1. King, Unfulfilled Hopes, Sermon Delivered at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, 5 April 1959, pp. 359–367 in this volume. King annotated the chapter titled “Shattered Dreams” in his personal copy of J. Wallace Hamilton’s Horns and Halos in Human Nature (pp. 25–34).

2. Franz Schubert (1797–1828), an Austrian composer, completed only two movements of his eighth symphony.

3. British sculptor and painter George Frederick Watts produced “Hope” in 1886; George A. Buttrick, Sermons Preached in a University Church (New York: Abingdon Press, 1959), p. 110: “Thus George Frederick Watts depicts Hope herself as seated atop our planet indeed, but with head forlornly bowed and her fingers plucking one unbroken harp string.”

4. The phrase “If we turn back to the life of the Apostle Paul” was replaced by “In Paul’s letter to the Roman Christians” in the published version (King, Strength to Love , p. 78).

5. The preceding two sentences were altered in the published version: “On his return he wished to have personal fellowship with that valiant group of Roman Christians” (p. 78).

6. In the published version: “His preparations now centered in carrying the gospel to the capital city of Rome and to Spain at the distant fringe of the empire” (p. 78). Meek, “Strength in Adversity”: “Paul had high hopes of going to Spain, the edge of the then known world, that he might take there his word about the Christian Gospel. And on the way he planned to visit the Christian folk in Rome, the capital city of the world. Paul wanted to see that little valiant group of Christians, folk whom he saluted in his letter as ‘Christians in the household of Caesar.’ The more he thought about his planned journey, the more his heart was warmed by it. Imagine, Rome with its many gods and with its great power, subject to the Christian Gospel.”

7. Meek, “Strength in Adversity”: “Paul did get to Rome, but he went as a prisoner and not as a freeman. Paul lived in Rome at the expense of the Roman government in a prison cell, held captive because of his faith. And Paul never saw the mountains and the plains and the coast life of Spain, because he died a martyr’s death before the hope of his mission could ever be fulfilled.”

8. Meek, “Strength in Adversity”: “How many of us in one way or another have dreamed our dreams of going to Spain, of fulfilling some far reaching hope, of doing valiantly for a great cause. But we never reached the Spain of our dreams. We had to settle for a far shorter journey. We were never able to wander freely about the streets of our Rome. Instead, we looked out through the little windows of some confining cell which the circumstances of life had built around us.”

9. The preceding two sentences were replaced in the published version: “Like Abraham, we too sojourn in the land of promise, but so often we do not become ‘heirs with him of the same promise.’ Always our reach exceeds our grasp” (p. 79).

10. The Muslim state of Pakistan was founded as a provision of the Indian Independence Act of 1947. Immediately following independence, border disputes and religious conflicts erupted between India and Pakistan, killing hundreds of thousands and displacing millions. The preceding sentence was altered in the published version: “After struggling for years to achieve independence, Mahatma Gandhi witnessed a bloody religious war between the Hindus and the Moslems, and the subsequent division of India and Pakistan shattered his heart’s desire for a united nation” (p. 79).

11. Cf. Matthew 26:39.

12. Cf. 2 Corinthians 12:7–10; Howard Thurman, Deep River , pp. 34–35: “Jesus, in the garden of Gethsemane, prayed that the cup might pass, but he had to drink it to the last bitter dregs. The Apostle Paul prayed for the ‘thorn’ to be taken from his flesh, but he had to carry the thorn to his grave.” In the published version the phrase “he went to his grave with this desire unfulfilled” was replaced with “the pain and annoyance continued to the end of his days” (p. 79).

13. Thurman, Deep River , p. 37: “It is quite possible to become obsessed with the idea of making everything and everybody atone for one’s predicament. All one’s frustrations may be distilled into a core of bitterness and disillusionment that expresses itself in a hardness of attitude and a total mercilessness—in short, one may become mean. You have seen people like that. They seem to have a demoniacal grudge against life.” King also paraphrased this passage in a handwritten note for a sermon; see King, Notes on Deep River by Howard Thurman, October 1960.

14. The preceding twelve sentences were altered in the published version: “Because he cannot corner God or life, he releases his pent-up vindictiveness in hostility toward other people. He may be extremely cruel to his mate and inhuman to his children. In short, meanness becomes his dominating characteristic. He loves no one and requires love from no one. He trusts no one and does not expect others to trust him. He finds fault in everything and everybody, and he continually complains” (p. 79). King’s notes on Deep River also included these words: “They trust no one and have no interest in doing so…For them life is essentially evil, and they are essentially vengeful…They have nothing to lose because they have lost everything” (King, Notes on Deep River , October 1960).

15. The preceding four sentences were altered in the published version: “Medical science reveals that such physical ailments as arthritis, gastric ulcer, and asthma have on occasion been encouraged by bitter resentments. Psychosomatic medicine, dealing with bodily sicknesses which come from mental illnesses, shows how deep resentment may result in physical deterioration” (p. 80). Leslie Weatherhead, “The Nature of Christ’s Temptations,” in The Key Next Door (New York: Abingdon Press, 1960), pp. 50–51: “I must speak very carefully here, but it is known that arthritis is sometimes touched off by resentment—it would be foolish to overlook the fact that some illnesses are what we now delight to call psychosomatic. That is to say, they show in the body, but they are caused or touched off in the mind, and arthritis is one of them. Asthma is another; the gastric ulcer is another…There can be no doubt that resentment, long harbored in the mind, is a faulty reaction to grief and capable of setting up actual physical illness.”

16. The repetition of the phrase “they are” in the preceding three sentences was omitted in the published version (p. 80).

17. Khayyám, Rubáiyát , XVI.

18. King quotes Charlotte Elliott’s hymn, “My God and Father! While I Stray” (1834).

19. King quotes from Khayyám, Rubáiyát , LXIX and LXXI. The final line in the published version of this sermon read: “nor all your Piety nor Wit / Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, / Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it”(p. 81).

20. The phrase “as are bitterness and withdrawal” was inserted at the end of this sentence in the published version (p. 82).

21. Cf. Jeremiah 10:19.

22. Fosdick, On Being a Real Person , p. 6: “Charles Darwin, as he himself said, ‘almost continually unwell’; Robert Louis Stevenson, with his tuberculosis; Helen Keller, blind and deaf.”

23. The preceding six sentences were condensed in the published version: “Many of the world’s most influential personalities have exchanged their thorns for crowns. Charles Darwin, suffering from a recurrent physical illness; Robert Louis Stevenson, plagued with tuberculosis; and Helen Keller, inflicted with blindness and deafness, responded not with bitterness or fatalism, but rather by the exercise of a dynamic will transformed negative circumstances into positive assets” (p. 82).

24. The preceding two sentences were condensed in the published version: “How familiar is the experience of longing for Spain and settling for a Roman prison, and how less familiar the transforming of the broken remains of a disappointed expectation into opportunities to serve God’s purpose!” (p. 83).

25. The word “Negroes” replaced “as a people” in the published version (p. 83).

26. The preceding two sentences were condensed in the published version: “By recognizing the necessity of suffering in a righteous cause, we may possibly achieve our humanity’s full stature” (p. 83).

27. Thurman, Deep River , p. 35: “But it must be intimately remembered that slavery was a dirty, sordid, inhuman business. When the slaves were taken from their homeland, the primary social unit was destroyed, and all immediate tribal and family ties were ruthlessly broken… There is no more hapless victim than one who is cut off from family, from language, from one’s roots.”

28. Thurman, Deep River , p. 36: “In instance after instance, husbands were sold from wives, children were separated from parents; a complete and withering attack was made on the sanctity of the home and the family. Added to all this, the slave women were constantly at the mercy of the lust and rapacity of the master himself, while the slave husband or father was powerless to intervene.”

29. Thurman, Deep River , p. 35: “For the slave, freedom was not on the horizon; there stretched ahead the long road down which there marched in interminable lines only the rows of cotton, the sizzling heat, the riding overseer with his rawhide whip, the auction block where families were torn asunder, the barking of the bloodhounds.”

30. King invokes the title to Paul Tillich’s book The Courage to Be .

31. The preceding three sentences were altered in the published version: “At times in our lives the tail winds of joy, triumph, and fulfillment favor us, and at times the head winds of disappointment, sorrow, and tragedy beat unrelentingly against us” (p. 84).

32. Cf. Acts 16:7–9.

33. In the published version, the preceding five sentences were altered: “On every side were broken plans and shattered dreams. Planning to visit Spain, he was consigned to a Roman prison. Hoping to go to Bithynia, he was sidetracked to Troas. His gallant mission for Christ was measured ‘in journeyings often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils by mine own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren.’ Did he permit these conditions to master him?” (pp. 84–85).

34. Philippians 4:11.

35. The previous six sentences were altered in the published version: “Does this sound like complacency? Nor did he learn resignation to inscrutable fate. By discovering the distinction between spiritual tranquillity and the outward accidents of circumstance, Paul learned to stand tall and without despairing amid the disappointments of life” (p. 85).

36. Cf. Philippians 4:7.

37. The preceding paragraph was altered in the published version: “Each of us who makes this magnificent discovery will, like Paul, be a recipient of that true peace ‘which passeth all understanding.’ Peace as the world commonly understands it comes when the summer sky is clear and the sun shines in scintillating beauty, when the pocketbook is full, when the mind and body are free of ache and pain, and when the shores of Spain have been reached. But this is not true peace. The peace of which Paul spoke is a calmness of soul amid terrors of trouble, inner tranquillity amid the howl and rage of outer storm, the serene quiet at the center of a hurricane amid the howling and jostling winds. We readily understand the meaning of peace when everything is going right and when one is ‘up and in,’ but we are baffled when Paul speaks of that true peace which comes when a man is ‘down and out,’ when burdens lie heavy upon his shoulders, when pain throbs annoyingly in his body, when he is confined by the stone walls of a prison cell, and when disappointment is inescapably real. True peace, a calm that exceeds all description and all explanation, is peace amid storm and tranquillity amid disaster” (p. 85).

38. John 14:27.

39. Cf. Acts 16:22–25.

40. King quotes from the spiritual “Bye and Bye.”

41. In the published version: “These are living examples of peace that passeth all understanding” (p. 85).

42. Cf. 1 Corinthians 15:55–57.

43. This sentence was omitted and the previous sentence continued “for we know, as Paul testified, in life or in death, in Spain or Rome, ‘that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose’” (p. 86).

44. King quotes Civilla D. Martin’s hymn “God Will Take Care of You” (1904).

45. Khayyám, Rubáiyát , LXIX.

Source: MLKP, MBU, Martin Luther King, Jr., Papers, 1954–1968, Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center, Boston University, Boston, Mass.

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Sharing innovative ideas for life, shattered dreams (wisdom from a dr. king sermon).

Dr. Martin Luther King, a civil rights icon and prolific intellectual, addressed the topic of disappointment in a sermon he preached in 1962 entitled “Shattered Dreams.” The main takeaway is that it’s that how we respond to life’s inevitable setbacks that makes all the difference in the world. You can find the complete transcript at the King Institute ( here ). Below are a few highlights from the sermon that I found particularly compelling. I’ve designed it such that if you read from top to bottom you will come away with a solid grasp of the entire sermon. Dr. King undoubtedly had a way with words, but his ideas resonate even more powerfully.

Our sermon today brings us face to face with one of the most agonizing problems of human experience. Very few, if any, of us are able to see all of our hopes fulfilled. So many of the hopes and promises of our mortal days are unrealized. Each of us, like Shubert, begins composing a symphony that is never finished. There is much truth in George Frederick Watts’ imaginative portrayal of Hope in his picture entitled Hope. He depicts Hope as seated atop our planet, but her head is sadly bowed and her fingers are plucking one unbroken harp string. Who has not had to face the agony of blasted hopes and shattered dreams?

It is quite possible for one to seek to deal with this problem by distilling all his frustrations into a core of bitterness and resentment of spirit. The persons who follow this path develop a hardness of attitude and a coldness of heart. They develop a bitter hatred for life itself. In fact, hate becomes the dominant force in their lives. They hate God, they hate the people around them, and they hate themselves. Since they can’t corner God or life, they take out their vengeance on other people. If they are married they are extremely cruel to their mate. If they have children, they treat them in the most inhuman manner. When they are not beating them, they are screaming at them; and when they are not screaming at them, they are cursing them. In short, they are mean. They love nobody and they demand no love. They trust no one and do not expect anyone to trust them. They find fault in everything and everybody. They always complain. You have seen people like this. They are cruel, vindictive and merciless.

Another possible reaction to the experience of blasted hopes is for the individuals to withdraw completely into themselves. They become absolute introverts. They allow no one to come into their lives and they refuse to go out to others. Such persons give up in the struggle of life. They lose the zest for living. They attempt to escape the disappointments of life by lifting their minds to a transcendent realm of cold indifference. Detachment is the word that may describe them. They are too unconcerned to love and they are too passionless to hate. They are too detached to be selfish and too lifeless to be unselfish. They are too indifferent to experience moments of joy and they are too cold to experience moments of sorrow.16 In short, such people are neither dead nor alive; they merely exist. Their eyes behold the beauties of nature, and yet they do not see them. Their ears are subjected to the majestic sounds of great music, and yet they do not hear it. Their hands gently touch a charming little baby, and yet they do not feel him. There is nothing of the aliveness of life left in them; there is only the dull motion of bare existence. Their disappointed hope leads them to a crippling cynicism.

Another way that people respond to life’s disappointments is to adopt a philosophy of fatalism. This is the idea that whatever happens must happen, and that all events are determined by necessity. Fatalism implies something foreordained and inescapable. The people who subscribe to The this philosophy follow a course of absolute resignation. They resign themselves to what they consider their fate. They see themselves as little more than helpless orphans thrown out in the terrifying immensities of space. Since they believe that man has no freedom, they seek neither to deliberate nor to make decisions. They wait passively for external forces to deliberate and decide for them. They never actively seek to change their circumstances, since they believe that all circumstances, like the Greek tragedies, are controlled by irresistible and foreordained forces. Often the fatalists are very religious people who see God as the determiner and controller of destiny. Everything, they feel, is God’s will, however evil it happens to be.

For one to sink in the quicksands of this type of fatalism is both intellectually and psychologically stifling. Since freedom is a part of the essence of man, the fatalist, in his denial of freedom, becomes a puppet and not a person. He is right in his conviction that there is no absolute freedom, and that freedom always operates within the framework of predestined structure. Thus a man is free to go north from Atlanta to Washington or South from Atlanta to Miami. But he is not free to go north to Miami or South to Washington. Freedom is always within destiny. But there is freedom. We are both free and destined. Freedom is the act of deliberating, deciding and responding within our destined nature.

But even more, fatalism is based on a terrible conception of God. It sees everything that happens, evil and good alike, as the will of God. Any healthy religion will rise above the idea that God wills evil. It is true that God has to permit evil in order to preserve the freedom of man. But this does not mean that he causes it. That which is willed is intended, and the idea that God intends for a child to be born blind, or that God gives cancer to this person and inflicts insanity upon another is rank heresy. Such a false idea makes God into a devil rather than a loving Father. So fatalism is a tragic and dangerous way to deal with the problem of unfulfilled dreams.

What, then, is the answer? We must accept our unwanted and unfortunate circumstance and yet cling to a radiant hope. The answer lies in developing the capacity to accept the finite disappointment and yet cling to the infinite hope. In speaking of acceptance, I do not mean the grim, bitter acceptance of those who are fatalistic. I mean the kind of acceptance that Jeremiah achieved as expressed in the words, “this is my grief and I must bear it.”

This means sitting down and honestly confronting your shattered dream. Don’t follow the escapist method of trying “to put it out of your mind.” This will lead to repression which is always psychologically injurious. Place it at the forefront of your mind and stare daringly at it. Then ask yourself, “how can I transform this liability into an asset?”. . . Almost anything that happens to us can be woven into the purposes of God. It may lengthen our cords of sympathy. It may break our self-centered pride. Even the cross, which was willed by wicked men, was woven by God into the redemption of the world.

Many of the world’s most influential characters have transformed their thorns into a crown. Charles Darwin was almost always physically ill. Robert Louis Stevenson was inflicted with tuberculosis. Helen Keller was blind and deaf. But they did not respond to these conditions with bitter resentment and grim fatalism. Rather they stood up to life, and, through the exercise of a dynamic will, transformed a negative into a positive. [George Frideric] Handel confronted the most difficult and trying circumstances in his life. Says his biographer: “His health and his fortunes had reached the lowest ebb. His right side had become paralyzed, and his money was all gone. His creditors seized him and threatened him with imprisonment. For a brief time he was tempted to give up the fight—but then he rebounded again to compose the greatest of his inspirations, the epic “Messiah.”

In the final analysis our ability to deal creatively with shattered dreams and blasted hopes will be determined by the extent of our faith in God. A genuine faith will imbue us with the conviction that there is a God beyond time and a Life beyond Life. Thus we know that we are not alone in any circumstance, however dismal and catastrophic it may be. God dwells with us in life’s confining and oppressive cells. And even if we die there having not received the earthly promise, he will walk with us down that mysterious road called death, and lead us at last to that indescribable city that he has prepared for us. Let us never feel that God’s creative power is exhausted by this earthly life, and his majestic love is locked within the limited walls of time and space. This would be a strongly irrational universe if God did not bring about an ultimate wedding of virtue and fulfillment. This would be an absurdly absurdly meaningless universe if death turned out to a blind alley leading the human race into a state of nothingness. God, through Christ has taken the sting from death, and it no longer has dominion over us. This earthly life is merely an embryonic prelude to a new awakening, and death is an open door that leads us into life eternal.

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Martin Luther King, Jr. on Shattered Dreams and Unfulfilled Hopes

We come to the point of seeing that no matter how long we pray for them sometimes, and no matter how long we cry out for a solution to our problems, no matter how much we desire it, we don’t get the answer. The only answer that we get is a fading echo of our desperate cry, of our lonely cry. So we find Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane praying that the cup would be removed from him. But he has to drink it with all of its bitterness and all of its pain. We find Paul praying that the thorn would be removed from his flesh, but it is never removed, and he is forced to go all the way to the grave with it. And so in this text, we find Paul wanting to go to Spain with a, for a noble purpose, to carry the gospel of Jesus Christ to Spain. Paul never gets to Spain. He ends up in Rome, not as a free man but as a man in prison. This is the story of life. In so many instances, it becomes the arena of unrealized dreams and unfulfilled hopes, frustration with no immediate solution in the environment.

c. The final alternative is creative. It involves the exercise of a great and creative will.

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This Is the Year of Broken Dreams

What is 2020's onslaught of death and disappointment doing to our minds.

Posted August 18, 2020

What's that sound?

Sobs. The click of locks. Echoes in empty stadiums. The syncopated whoosh and thwap of ventilators. Children being told "No." Coughs.

It's hammers hitting nails, boarding up businesses. It's footsteps pacing floors at 3 a.m.

Collectively, it is the bump and shriek of shattered dreams.

Before this year, we thought of broken dreams as singular: one individual, one dream — then bang. Breakup. Collision. Stroke.

But now, from near and far, we witness heartbreak constantly, sequentially, as one hears drum machines. By summer, we are already burnt out on broken dreams.

They have become a mass phenomenon, a syndrome. Rife. Not just one raging fever. Not just one shut shop. Not just one layoff notice, pawned ring, unpaid rent. Not just one cancelled wedding, exhibition, concert, tournament. Not just one oboeist or chef or tattoo artist unemployed. Not just one player sidelined for one game.

More, more, more, more: Remember exponential notations from algebra? Those abstract, anodyne, cute little numerals floating alongside bigger ones like birds?

This year, dreams break around the world in sheaves, cascades, biblical-plague waves, savaging families, streets, schools, cities, industries, traditions, nations.

Their cost is not just financial or medical but also emotional. Watching dreams shatter left and right, knowing ours might be next, how can we comprehend, much less process, such loss? Studies show that even hearing about fearsome circumstances raises the likelihood of developing PTSD .

This year, we hear:

About the man who spent his life savings creating a café he had to close in March. The archeologist whose dig was meant to start this spring. The pair who booked, then cancelled, what they knew would be their last trip home.

The artist set to debut at a now-cancelled-forever festival. The high-school debater for whom this would have been The Year. The owner of that motel chain. The grieving newlywed. The would-have-been Olympian.

Like seven billion sudden conscripts, we march through broken-dream battlefields strewn with the sick, the dead, the doomed, the destitute, past shuttered storefronts, and sealed schools.

Can our shock-blistered brains calculate not only the multiplicity of broken dreams but their lengths, depths, breadths, concentricities — outwards and upwards, down the generations, down the years?

Shattered dreams shatter more than just their dreamers. For each cancelled class, count each measure of French or chemistry unlearned and friends unmet and social skills ungained, each measure killing a parade of possibilities. Count those dreams slain before their would-be dreamers knew themselves as such. For each closed business, count its owner, staff, and loyal, trusting customers.

We cannot simply stand and watch, unmarked. We cannot help but hurt, not just because empathy burns, but because this crisis — its literal contagiosity, its as-yet-unknown end — triggers our mortal fear while corroding the ostensible insulative power of the bystander effect .

It forces us to feel. It forces us to learn whole new emotional arithmetics, this history-book-worthy horror, this Mad Max ian reality, this exponentiality enfleshed. Are we changing? Will all this witnessing echo in us eternally? Is trauma rewiring our brains right now?

We will remember this year like medieval tapestries chronicling tragedies, in which decaying corpses litter hillsides while angular soldiers shake their fists and swords at God uncomprehendingly.

Fancy machines cannot deliver us from daily scenes — seen, televised, imagined — of death and debacle and decay. The globalness and constancy of watching others fall keeps rekindling our fear.

Also our grief . Sorrow. Anxiety . Panic, distraction, 2020-isms such as shame regarding shattered dreams that we are mocked for mourning because some say they were inessential to begin with.

Boredom . Mistrust . Helplessness that feels foreverish. Yearning. Anger . Uncertainty. Regret. Nostalgia for 2019.

And yes, faint hope. Resilience . Ingenuity . Charity . Kindness. Diligence.

Dread. Xenophobia . Frustration. Isolation. Guilt : for spreading germs and/or surviving . Disconnect. Compassion — then its overload, that cauterizing short-circuit we mistake for ennui.

We are the ones they will study someday after the universities reopen and space-suited scholars wonder how we braved such fear and witnessed such destruction so unprecedentedly and for so long.

S. Rufus is the author, under the byline Anneli Rufus, of books including Party of One and Stuck.

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The Difference between Dealing with Stress and Grieving a Shattered Dream: A Two-Part Article

“All connections are infused with dreams of what is possible in the future. Thus, when we lose something or someone important to us, we aren’t just grieving the loss, we are grieving the shattered dream.”  ~ Bill Crawford

I know that this was my experience when I lost my parents. Being a male raised in the piney woods of North East Texas, I thought that the way to deal with grief was to resist feeling anything, and so, when faced with the loss of my parents (and given that I was an only child in my family), I shut down and tried to feel nothing. Unfortunately, not only was I successful in this resistance, I received a lot of support for this position. People would come up to me and congratulate me for “doing so well” and “being so strong.” Little did they know that I had shut down altogether, and was just going through the motions.

Finally, after years of denial, I entered a master’s program in psychology that had the wisdom to insist that the students deal with their issues before they were let loose on the public. This requirement turned out to be a blessing in disguise, because it allowed me to get in touch with these long-repressed emotions in a safe place with people that I trusted. As a result, I finally began open up and allow myself to feel the emotions that had been buried for so long, and a very strange thing happened.

For the first time in my life, it felt really, really good to feel really, really bad.

You see, when I had decided to feel no pain at the loss of my parents, I also had unwittingly shut off my connection to my love for them as well. Thus, when I was willing to open to the pain and allow it to be a reflection of my love, I was able to give the experience of grieving a sense of purpose and meaning. The tears became a testimony to my love for the two people who had given me life.

I also noticed that I was not only grieving the loss of my parents, but also what would never be. As I mentioned, I was only 21 at the time of their death, and was just beginning to reconnect with them after my “teenage independence” phase. Not only was that reconciliation cut short, but I realized that they would never see their grandchildren, never see me earn my Ph.D., and I would never have the opportunity to give to them as they had given to me.

This “Shattered Dream” concept (developed by Chicago psychologist, Ken Moses) has come to be a major component in my work with others who have experienced a loss. Whether grieving the loss of a relationship, a loved one, a job, a pet, or even just the discovery that what we thought was going to happen will never come to pass, what we are all grieving is a shattered dream. Plus, since the dream, or our vision of the future is always perfect, always about hope and what we see as possible, the resulting grief reflects this depth of this pain.

Next week I will conclude this two-part discussion with another quote on grief, and some ideas about how to move through this process in a way that facilitates healing and wholeness. For now, however, I encourage you to think back about the losses in your life. Did any of them have a shattered dream attached? Did you find yourself resisting the feelings associated with the loss because you either didn’t want to feel that pain and/or you felt you had to be “strong” for those around you? If so, maybe now is the time to begin to reconsider our feelings in this area and discover whether there might be some reason that the experience of grief is so universally consistent . . . some wisdom in the way our body feels after a loss . . . some way to move through this process in a way that allows us to not only grieve the shattered dream, but to begin to create more purposeful dreams of the future.

“Grieving is not the problem, it’s part of the solution. It is an unlearned, self-sufficient process that helps us to move from the past to the future, from inaction to action… from shattered dreams to more purposeful dreams based upon who we really are and what we can create.” ~ adapted from Ken Moses

As promised, in this second quote and comment on grief, I am going to attempt to offer some thoughts on how we might move through this emotional minefield and not only survive, but actually find meaning in the process . . . how we can move from grieving our shattered dreams to a place where we can create new, more purposeful dreams, and how the experience of grieving can be a both an honoring of the past and a pathway to the future.

As with my other ideas and philosophies on dealing with stress, frustration, anger, etc., the first thing I feel we need to understand is how the experience of grieving is tied to the physiology of our body. For example, most people know that we have two nervous systems: the sympathetic and the parasympathetic. The sympathetic nervous system is designed to gear us up to be able to fight or flee when faced with a threat or trauma of some sort. The parasympathetic nervous system is designed to bring us back to normal after facing this sort of trauma (such as loss). What many people don’t know, however, is that one of the functions of this parasympathetic nervous system is the stimulation of the tear glands! Thus, crying (and the experience of grieving, in general) isn’t in the way… it is the way! It’s our parasympathetic nervous system kicking in to help us deal with the loss, return to “normal,” and go on with life.

As mentioned in the previous quote and comment on grief, this unfortunately isn’t how our culture views the experience. We in the West tend to define crying and the other emotions associated with grief as “losing it, breaking down, falling to pieces,” etc., and thus we tend to resist these emotions when they come upon us. Unfortunately, this has us exerting a tremendous amount of energy to keep these feelings at bay, and thus not only do we feel exhausted as a result, we are blocking the very process that is designed to help us heal and move on.

This is where Chicago psychologist, Ken Moses, does an exceptional job of helping us see these emotions for the natural, normal, and even healthy “feeling states” that they are. First, the fact that he defines these as “seven feeling states of grieving,” versus “five stages of grief” is very helpful. While Elizabeth Kubler-Ross was very instrumental in helping us normalize the experience of grieving, as anyone who has experienced a loss knows, we don’t move smoothly from one stage to another until we arrive at acceptance. We might start with shock and denial, but then we might feel (in no particular order) confusion, anxiety, anger, fear, depression, and even guilt. Further, we can easily find ourselves re-experiencing these feeling states as they seem to wash over us much like a wave in the ocean. In fact, as with a wave, if we try to fight it, we will be unceremoniously up-ended, tossed around, and eventually thrown to the bottom. If, however, we are willing to let the wave roll over us, surrender to its natural, gravitational forces, and avoid trying to fight the experience, we can ride the current, eventually break the surface of the water, and begin to swim for shore.

In order to do this, we must first see the process of feeling not as the problem, but part of the solution . . . as our parasympathetic nervous system kicking in to help us deal with the trauma of loss. Next, we must understand why the loss affects us in this profound way. As mentioned in last week’s quote, we are grieving not just the loss of a person or situation (job, relationship, etc.) we are also grieving a shattered dream and/or the hopes and dreams of what we thought was possible, but will now never come to pass. Plus, we are also very likely grieving any past shattered dreams that we resisted grieving at the time of the loss.

One way to help with this process of moving through the feeling states of grieving is to give them meaning. Unfortunately, for many of us, the emotions we feel after a loss only serve to underline how much pain we are in, and since we think (intellectually) that this only makes things worse, we resist feeling the feelings. This is understandable, it just doesn’t work.

What we need to do instead is to first see these emotions as the parasympathetic nervous system kicking in to bring us back to normal, and then give each of the feelings meaning other than just to remind us of the pain of the loss. For example, Ken Moses speaks of how shock and denial (generally the first of the feeling states) allow us to retreat into ourselves so that we can begin to marshall resources to deal with the loss. In other words, the reason it initially feels too overwhelming to deal with the loss is because it is actually too overwhelming. What is needed is a time of numbness so that we can create internal and external resources to help us face and accept what seems unacceptable. Anger and anxiety then move us from inaction to action, and help us begin to establish the kind of boundaries we need at times like these . . . boundaries that allow us to take care of ourselves versus always being so concerned about the needs of others that we put ourselves last on the list.

As mentioned in my previous quote and comment on the subject of grief (Grieving the Shattered Dream, Part I – http://www.billcphd.com/quotes/grief-part1.php), crying can also be given a purpose. Instead of it being a sign of our failure to cope, or what we must hide to avoid making others uncomfortable, it can be a behavioral representation of our love for what or who we lost. When working with people who are grieving (or when grieving myself), I recommend allowing the tears to flow all the way down our cheeks and even drip onto our clothes, versus stopping them cold with a tissue at the edge of our eyes the way most people do.

Regardless of how we cry, however, what’s important is that we cry with purpose, or in a way that is meaningful, because if we can give these tears meaning, if we can see them as “liquid love” or as a way to connect to and even celebrate our love for who or what we have lost, then we can allow the wave to sweep over us, cleanse us, and even begin to wash away the pain.

Anyone who has ever had a “good cry” knows this feeling. We surrender to the emotion, temporarily “losing control” and the natural, normal, healthy experience of grieving takes us to a new place . . . a place where the pain is not quite as bad and yet the memory of the lost love is still as strong, or maybe even stronger because now we have learned to feel the love through the pain and give them both new meaning…a place where we move from the past to the future, from inaction to action, from shattered dreams to more purposeful dreams based upon who we really are and what we can create.

Shattered Dreams: the Legacy of the 2008 Business Financial Meltdown

This essay about the 2008 financial meltdown highlights the catastrophic consequences of unchecked greed and speculative excess. Fueled by a toxic mix of subprime mortgages and risky financial instruments, the crisis triggered a global economic downturn, leaving millions jobless and homes foreclosed. It underscores the fragility of the financial system and the profound human toll of unchecked speculation. Despite efforts to stabilize markets and prevent a repeat, the scars of the crisis endure, serving as a stark reminder of the need for fundamental reform and a more resilient, equitable economic model.

How it works

In the chronicles of economic upheaval, few chapters resonate as profoundly as the 2008 financial meltdown. Often dubbed the Great Recession, this seismic event reshaped the contours of global finance, leaving an indelible mark on societies and economies worldwide. To comprehend its magnitude, one must delve into the intricate web of factors that precipitated this cataclysmic event.

At its epicenter lay the subprime mortgage crisis, a ticking time bomb fueled by a toxic cocktail of greed and lax regulation. Mortgage lenders, emboldened by the allure of quick profits, extended loans to borrowers with questionable creditworthiness, setting the stage for a housing market implosion.

As housing prices soared to unsustainable heights, a house of cards emerged, built upon a foundation of subprime mortgages bundled into complex financial instruments known as mortgage-backed securities.

When the housing bubble inevitably burst, the repercussions were felt far and wide. As homeowners defaulted on their mortgages en masse, financial institutions found themselves holding billions in toxic assets, their balance sheets hemorrhaging red ink. The contagion spread like wildfire, infecting banks, insurance companies, and investment firms, triggering a domino effect of bankruptcies and bailouts that reverberated across the globe.

Yet, the crisis was not solely the result of reckless lending practices; it was also a tale of hubris and unchecked speculation. Wall Street titans, emboldened by years of unfettered deregulation, engaged in a high-stakes game of financial alchemy, concocting ever more complex derivatives and exotic financial products in pursuit of outsized profits. As the music stopped and the bubble burst, these financial wizards found themselves exposed, their elaborate house of cards collapsing in a spectacular fashion.

The fallout from the crisis was swift and severe. Unemployment skyrocketed, homes were foreclosed upon, and retirement savings evaporated overnight. Families were torn apart, dreams shattered, and lives irrevocably altered. The human cost of the crisis was immeasurable, leaving scars that would take years to heal.

In the aftermath of the crisis, policymakers scrambled to contain the damage and prevent a complete economic meltdown. Central banks slashed interest rates to historic lows, while governments implemented massive stimulus packages aimed at jumpstarting economic growth. These measures, while controversial, were deemed necessary to prevent a repeat of the Great Depression and stabilize financial markets teetering on the brink of collapse.

Yet, despite these efforts, the scars of the 2008 financial meltdown still linger, casting a long shadow over the global economy. In its wake, trust in the financial system was shattered, faith in the American Dream shaken to its core. The crisis laid bare the inherent flaws of a system driven by greed and short-termism, prompting calls for fundamental reform and a reimagining of capitalism itself.

In conclusion, the 2008 financial meltdown stands as a cautionary tale, a stark reminder of the dangers of unchecked greed and speculative excess. It exposed the fragility of the global financial system, laying bare the interconnectedness of markets and the profound impact of financial crises on real people’s lives. As we reflect on the legacy of the crisis, we must heed its lessons and strive to build a more resilient, equitable, and sustainable economy for future generations.

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Jay Gatsby: Shattered Dreams

F. Scott Fitzgeralds The Great Gatsby is a tragic tale of love distorted by obsession. Finding himself in the city of New York, Jay Gatsby is a loyal and devoted man who is willing to cross oceans and build mansions for his one true love. His belief in realistic ideals and his perseverance greatly influence all the decisions he makes and ultimately direct the course of his life. Although his intentions are true, he sometimes has a crude way of getting his point across. When he makes his ideals heard, his actions are wasted on a thoughtless and shallow society.

It is also Gatsbys ideals that blind him to reality. When he first meets Daisy Buchanan, Gatsby has committed himself to the following of a grail (156). With extreme dedication, he stops at nothing to win her love back, after years of separation. Everything he has done, up to this point, has been directed toward winning Daisys favor and having her back in his life. The greatest example of this dedication is the mansion he has constructed, a colossal affair by any standard… th a tower on one side, spanking new under a thin beard of raw ivy, and a marble swimming pool, and more than forty acres of lawn and garden (9).

Once a penniless young man without a past (156), he transforms himself into a self-made millionaire and builds an extravagant mansion, all for the love of Daisy Buchanan. He also strategically places the 2 mansion across the lake from Daisys house. From his window, Gatsby can see the blue colored lights of her house. Starting from the first day that he meets her, Gatsby does everything within his power to please Daisy.

Nothing has changed for Gatsby as far as his feelings for Daisy are concerned, even though it has been five years since their first meeting, and despite the fact that she has married Tom Buchanan. He revalue[s] everything in his house according to the amount of response it [draws] from her well loved eyes (96). Inevitably, the two of them draw closer, but this in no way deters Gatsby from trying to make Daisy happy. He even terminates the employment of most of his servants because Daisy is afraid that they will begin gossiping about the afternoons she shares with Gatsby.

The whole caravansary [falls] in like a card house at the disapproval in her eyes. (120) His loyalty to his dream is Gatsbys most noble characteristic. Although it seems to be too idealistic, Gatsby [throws] himself into it with a creative passion, adding to it all the time, decking it out with every bright feather that [drifts] his way. (101) His entire existence revolves around his dream; recapturing Daisys heart, taking her away from Tom and living happily ever after in his mansion he built with her approval in mind. Sadly enough for Gatsby, devotion is not the driving force that propels life in New York.

Society is based on money and power, not faith and love. Daisy and Tom [smash] up things and creatures and then [retreat] back into their money or their vast 3 carelessness. (187) Even Gatsby finds himself forced to earn his money through illegal activities and gambling. He sees nothing wrong with these activities because they are part of his dream to have the resources to maintain his lifestyle the way he has become accustomed. Tom overlooks Daisys time with Gatsby as a presumptuous little lirtation, (142), not the true love Gatsby hoped it would be.

One could wonder if Daisy is worth the adoration Gatsby bestows on her. He truly loves her, but her shallow, materialistic nature must have tumbled short of his dreams (101) at some point. Gatsby is totally in the dark to the reality of society. He has built up his own dream world so perfectly that he can never accept the fact that Daisy is never going to leave Tom for him. This blindness leads to his ironic death. While he is trying to protect Daisy, Gatsby is killed by Wilson, who is avenging the death of his wife Myrtle.

Wilson does this in a fit of rage, after he discovers Gatsby was the one to run his wife over in the street and leave her for dead. Gatsby dies from a gunshot and floats face down in the middle of his marble pool until his butler discovers his body. For almost five years, his idealism and his perseverance kept him, and his dream, alive. But sadly enough, he had no way of knowing that these very traits would also kill him. His dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him.

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Home — Essay Samples — Literature — Death of a Salesman — Broken Dream – The Deception of Willy Loman

Broken Dream - The Deception of Willy Loman

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Death of a Salesman

Shattered dream - the delusion of willy loman james lee.

"The jagged edges of a shattered dream." Do you find that the play leaves you with such an impression?

Death of a Salesman tells the story of a man confronting failure in the success-driven society of America and shows the tragic trajectory which eventually leads to his suicide. Willy Loman is a symbolic icon of the failing America; he represents those that have striven for success but, in struggling to do so, have instead achieved failure in its most bitter form. Arthur Miller's tragic drama is a probing portrait of the typical American psyche portraying an extreme craving for success and superior status in a world otherwise fruitless. To some extent, therefore, Death of Salesman is concerned with the 'jagged edges of a shattered dream' but on another more tragic and bitter level, it also evokes the decline of a man into lunacy and the subsequent effect this has on those around him, particularly his family.

Miller amalgamates the archetypal tragic hero with the mundane American citizen. The result is the anti-hero, Willy Loman. He is a simple salesman who constantly aspires to become 'great'. Nevertheless, Willy has a waning career as a salesman and is an aging man who considers himself to be a...

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Review: ‘Destiny of Shattered Dreams’ by Nilesh Rathod

People often enjoy tales told by insiders. ‘Destiny of Shattered Dreams’ is one such story that reveals the results of unbridled greed, uncontrolled lust and deep-rooted arrogance of a businessman – Atul Shyamlal Malhotra. He’s ambitious. He’s arrogant. He’s corrupt. He’s promiscuous. He’s everything we know as bad in this world.

But he’s not unstoppable. When the fate comes calling, he pays a hefty price for all the malevolence he’s committed.

There is much more than just the impeccable plot in the novel And that is the background of the author – Nilesh Rathod – who himself owns a company which employs more than 2000 people. Nilesh lives a life of a true businessman and is surrounded with folks like Atul. So if we call him an insider of the industry or the business world, it would not be wrong.

It does not stop here. I have also closely witnessed the rise and the fall of many a men like Atul – who have been arrogant, ambitious and ravenous for money and sex in the IT industry. I say it on the basis of my decade long experience as the operations editor of India’s leading IT magazine Dataquest. I’ve seen many such stories that match the magnitude of the life of the protagonist – Atul. I could easily relate his life as depicted in the ‘Destiny of Shattered Dreams’ to quite a few infamous personalities whom perhaps most of us can recall. I’m talking about the likes of Ramalinga Raju of Satyam Computers and Phaneesh Murthy who was the man behind Infosys’ US expansion and later iGate’s exponential growth. We know what happened to them later.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading the novel. It barely bores you. However, I do not believe in revealing the story since it can jeopardize your interest.

While I would appreciate Nilesh’s literary passion in his maiden work, I won’t refrain from advising that he needs to bring in brevity into his later works. Overall I recommend this book to everyone who loves good fiction.

The writing style is far better and matches the literary standards that bridge the gap between a literary work and a commercial work. His style is way above when compared to the C-graders such as Chetan Bhagat and Amish Tripathi.

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Shattered Dreams

By: Steve   •  Essay  •  823 Words  •  December 13, 2009  •  956 Views

Essay title: Shattered Dreams

When I was a young girl growing up the best thing I remember were Sunday’s getting ready for church. After church, my family would proceed to have a meal together. We were a close family that shared conversations, laughter, and prayer. The strongest value was our Catholic religion. My parents taught us to live strictly by our religious teachings. My siblings and I had to attend church every Sunday and on Holy days of Obligation. We had to pray before and after each meal, pray in the mornings upon rising and in the evenings before retiring to bed. We also did a lot of charity work like feeding the homeless and visiting the shut-ins. I’ve attended Catholic School most of my life. I appreciated the significance and teachings we were taught. My parents did an exceptional job teaching us how to live by the Ten Commandments.

My image of marriage became a shattered dream when I was eleven years old, because my father who had taught me how to build a strong family with a religious foundation was committing adultery! The devastation flooded my thoughts and crushed my image of my father. My father who was my protector, someone I trusted, and had turned to for words of wisdom had betrayed my family and me! He didn’t know it at the time, but he set a picture of how a husband was supposed to be for me.

Divorce is the ending of two people who were married by law. (Webster’s dictionary) Donald Huges, author of “The Divorce Reality”, states “In the churches, people have a superstitious view that Christianity will keep from divorce, but they are subjected to the same problem as everyone else, and they include a lack of relationships skills . . . which is 90% of the United States.” (religion.com)The dysfunctions divorce couples face are money issues, lack of communication, and cheating spouses. In 2003, the husbands who have admitted to cheating on a spouse were 5%. The wives who admitted to cheating on a spouse were 4.55%. In 2004, Oprah’s magazine had a survey of women who have cheated on their spouses was 15%. The percentage of men was unknown. The couples who have been married despite an affair was 78%, later described the marriage as unhappy or empty. The thought which remains with me is, if you love and respect someone with your whole heart, why would any person destroy a family’s foundation and morals for a moment of lust?

When a divorce happens it affects the whole family. Depending on the children’s age, the parents should explain the situation with their children. In 2003 Bernalillo County’s divorce rate for families with children was 46% and families without children were 36%. The sole custody rate was 82% granted to the mothers. The parents who agree for joint custody of their children are 15% of mother’s and 35% of father’s. (divorcepeers.com)

I acknowledge marriage has decayed for most people. The age of marriage

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• Shattered Dreams: An essay analyzing Chanu's assimilation process i...
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Abstract [en].

Brick Lane has stimulated a wide range of debates regarding Monica Ali's portrayal of the inhabitants of the area from which the novel has taken its title. This essay claims that assimilation is the key theme of the novel, and that the desire to achieve it is represented most strongly in the character of Chanu. The latter's primary goal is to assimilate himself into the English society in which he now lives. In order to demonstrate just how complex this assimilation process is, Chanu is discussed in relation to society's influence on him and four concepts of post colonial theory, namely double consciousness, unhomeliness, mimicry and hybridity.

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Keywords [en], national category, identifiers, subject / course, educational program, supervisors, mattison, jane, ahlin, lena, open access in diva, file information, by organisation, on the subject, search outside of diva, altmetric score.