"Party Down" - Dreams are a life force

Is it good to hang on to lofty dreams, even when it seems like they'll never come true? Or are dreams just distracting escapes from the life that we have now?

The characters in Starz Network's now-extinct series Party Down (2009-2010) don't have many good experiences when it comes to dreams. The show is about a team of wannabe entertainers (a writer, a comedian, actors) who fecklessly attempt to break into Hollywood while working as caterers.

Virtually every episode of Party Down depicts the characters feeling superior to their humble catering work, and explores different aspects of the situation of being locked out of what you want to really be doing.

The second episode of the first season speaks directly to the issue at hand: the utility of lofty dreams:

CONSTANCE When you've been in the acting business as long as I have, you see that everything comes and goes in cycles. You're up, you're down.
HENRY Yeah, I mean, I quit so—
CONSTANCE You sound like my friend Ed. Now, Ed was an actor. And he tried and tried and never got that magic role. He worked nights at a copy store, lived in a terrible apartment filled with roaches, but he never gave up. Then, on his sixtieth birthday he said, 'That's it, I quit I can't do this anymore.' Guess what happened a week later?
CONSTANCE He died. Dreams are a life force.

If we take Constance's thinking a step further, we arrive at the idea that dreams are always worth pursuing—but not necessarily for the sake of fulfilling them. In the pursuit of a dream, we hold on to a sense of direction, purpose, and vitality.

It's easy for us to fall into thinking of desires, goals, and dreams as items on a checklist that need to be completed as soon as possible. However, in our best moments, we're not trying to be "done," and we can just enjoy the ride.

In some Eastern religions, there's an emphasis on enjoying the act work, rather than on constantly longing for the outcome of work. The success or failure of an enterprise is irrelevant; the state of mind that we're in while we are trying to succeed is what matters.

I'm reminded of Tibetan Buddhist sand mandalas. Some Buddhist monks practice a meditation that involves painstakingly creating an intricate mandala out of sand. Then, once the mandala is finished, they ritualistically destroy their work by blowing the whole thing away. It's a practice in mindfulness—paying close attention to what's going on—as well as acceptance of impermanence. The point of the meditation is not to have something beautiful, but to be absorbed in the process of making something beautiful. Constance is saying the same thing.