I know how men in exile feed on dreams.

“I know how men in exile feed on dreams.” — Thus spoke Aeschylus, the ancient tragedian of Greece, whose words carry the sorrow and wisdom of one who understood both the suffering and the resilience of the human soul. This line, drawn from the deep well of exile, is more than lament; it is revelation. It speaks of the power of dreams — those fragile visions that sustain the spirit when the body is far from home, when hope itself seems lost. For in exile, when all outward anchors are cut away, man turns inward, and it is in the dream that he continues to live, to breathe, to believe.

To be in exile is to walk between worlds — to dwell neither in the land of the living nor among the dead. The exile is stripped of his roots, cast adrift from the soil that once nourished him. Yet Aeschylus, wise and sorrowful, saw that even in this state of loss, the mind finds sustenance. The dream becomes bread, and memory becomes wine. The exiled man survives by imagining what once was, and what might still be. His dreams are both torment and salvation: they wound him with longing, yet keep his soul from dying.

The poet himself knew much of exile, for Aeschylus was a wanderer of thought and spirit. Living in an age of war and upheaval, he saw Athens rise and bleed, saw men driven from their homes by pride, by politics, by fate. His tragedies echo with the voice of the displaced — kings dethroned, heroes banished, nations broken. When he wrote that men “feed on dreams,” he did not speak metaphor alone; he spoke the truth of his age, and of all ages, for every human being at some time becomes an exile — from country, from love, from innocence, from the life they once knew.

Consider the life of Nelson Mandela, who, imprisoned for twenty-seven years, became an exile within his own nation. Locked behind iron and stone, deprived of family and freedom, what could sustain him but dreams? Dreams of equality, of the end of apartheid, of walking once more beneath an open sky. Those dreams, though intangible, were his nourishment. They fed his will, they kept his soul from despair. When he emerged, he was not broken — for he had fed on visions stronger than hunger.

Thus Aeschylus’s words are not merely tragic — they are triumphant. For in the dream lies the seed of endurance. The exile who dreams still believes in tomorrow. Though the world denies him, he carries a hidden homeland within his mind. Every dream he dreams is an act of defiance, a declaration that though he has been cast out, he is not conquered. The body may wander, but the spirit builds its own kingdom in the unseen.

To feed on dreams, then, is not weakness but wisdom. It is the art of the soul’s survival. When the outer world fails you, turn inward. There, in the temple of imagination and memory, you will find what no tyrant can take. The ancients understood this: that the dreamer is never wholly lost, for within him lives the vision of what is eternal.

So take this lesson, O seeker: when you find yourself in exile — from place, from peace, from certainty — do not despair. Dream. Let your mind be the hearth where hope still burns. Picture the life you long for, the truth you yearn to live. Feed upon that dream until strength returns, until you can rise again and make the dream real. For every exile who dreams becomes, in time, a builder of new worlds.

And when you look back upon your wanderings, you will see that your dreams were not illusions, but sustenance — the sacred bread of the spirit. As Aeschylus knew, men in exile feed on dreams not because they are weak, but because in the silence of exile, the dream is the only thing that still sings of home.