Dreams are necessary to life.

“Dreams are necessary to life.” Thus wrote Anaïs Nin, the poet of the human soul, the chronicler of passion, and the gentle mystic of imagination. In these five words lies a truth that has burned through all ages — that dreams are not luxuries, nor idle fantasies, but the very breath of existence. Without them, the body may survive, but the spirit withers. For man was not born only to eat, to toil, and to sleep; he was born to envision, to aspire, to reach beyond the horizon of what is. The dream is the flame that gives meaning to labor, the secret rhythm that beats beneath the heart of all creation.

Anaïs Nin lived through the storms of the twentieth century — through wars that shattered empires, through revolutions of thought and art that upended the old world. Amid this turmoil, she wrote not of destruction, but of renewal — of the inner world that no army could conquer. To her, the dreamer was not a fool, but a prophet of the possible. Her words remind us that even when the world falls into ruin, it is dreams that rebuild it. When she said that “dreams are necessary to life,” she was speaking of the sacred force that lifts humanity out of despair and compels it to create again — to paint, to write, to love, to believe.

For what is a life without dreams but a cage without light? A person who has ceased to dream lives only in half-measures — he exists, but he no longer lives. It is through dreams that we imagine who we might become, that we stretch the boundaries of the self and touch the infinite. The builder must first dream of his temple; the poet must first dream of her song. Every bridge, every book, every act of courage was once a dream, fragile and unseen, carried in the heart of one who refused to surrender to the ordinary. Thus, dreams are not the escape from reality — they are its source, the womb from which all realities are born.

History, too, gives us witness to this truth. Consider Martin Luther King Jr., who stood before the eyes of a divided nation and declared, “I have a dream.” His words were not idle visions — they were a force that stirred hearts, that moved nations, that bent the course of history. The dream of equality, first scorned as impossible, became the seed of transformation. And though the dreamer was struck down, the dream lived on — for such is the nature of a true dream: it survives the dreamer. It becomes the inheritance of all who dare to believe that life can be more than what it is.

Even in quieter lives, this same law holds true. The artist, the teacher, the healer, the parent — all are sustained by dreams. The mother dreams of the life her child will one day live; the scholar dreams of discoveries not yet known; the farmer dreams of green fields rising from dry earth. It is this unseen current of hope that keeps humanity moving forward through the trials of each day. Without it, the spirit would collapse under the weight of monotony. Dreams are the nourishment of the heart; they are to the soul what air is to the lungs.

But dreams demand courage, for they are not always gentle companions. To dream is to confront fear — the fear of failure, of rejection, of ridicule. Many abandon their dreams because they mistake hardship for impossibility. Yet Anaïs Nin’s words remind us that the cost of abandoning the dream is far greater than the pain of pursuing it. For the one who stops dreaming condemns themselves to a smaller life, a dimmer existence. To dream is to remain alive in the truest sense — alive to beauty, to possibility, to one’s own divine potential.

So, dear soul, take this wisdom to heart: guard your dreams as you would guard your life, for they are one and the same. When the world grows cold and practical voices whisper that dreams are foolish, remember that all progress was born from folly once. Dream not only when you sleep, but as you wake, as you work, as you love. Let your dreams guide your hands and steady your purpose. Feed them with patience, with courage, with faith — and they will, in turn, feed you with meaning.

For as Anaïs Nin declared, “Dreams are necessary to life.” They are not mere illusions, but the pulse of the human spirit, the invisible thread that connects man to the divine. Without them, the world grows grey and silent. But with them — even in darkness — the heart finds light. So dream boldly, live deeply, and remember: the dreamer is the true architect of reality, and through dreaming, humanity endures.