Ideologies separate us. Dreams and anguish bring us together.

“Ideologies separate us. Dreams and anguish bring us together.” Thus spoke Eugène Ionesco, the playwright of paradox and prophet of the absurd, whose words cut through the illusions of intellect and strike at the beating heart of humanity. In this simple yet profound truth, Ionesco unveils the eternal tension between the mind and the soul—the way ideas divide, but shared emotion unites. For while ideologies are built of reason, belief, and boundary, dreams and anguish spring from the common depths of human experience, where no creed or nation can stand between one heart and another.

Ionesco lived through an age of great division. Born in Romania and shaped by the chaos of war-torn Europe, he saw firsthand how ideology—whether political, religious, or philosophical—could turn brother against brother. In his lifetime, fascism and communism rose like twin storms, each claiming truth, each demanding allegiance, and each leaving ruin in its wake. From that crucible of human folly, Ionesco drew his wisdom: that the more people cling to the systems of thought they believe will save them, the more they forget the simple reality that they are human before they are anything else.

“Ideologies separate us.” The intellect, for all its brilliance, is quick to draw lines—to say this is right, this is wrong, these are my people, those are not. Ideology gives comfort by providing structure, but it also blinds by giving certainty. Once a man says, “I am this, and you are that,” the wall begins to rise. Nations, religions, parties, schools of thought—each becomes a fortress. Yet the truth of the heart cannot be confined to any one doctrine. No ideology has ever contained the fullness of the human soul.

But when Ionesco says, “Dreams and anguish bring us together,” he calls us back to what is eternal and shared. Dreams are the purest expression of the human spirit—the longing for love, freedom, meaning, and beauty. And anguish, though painful, is the bond of empathy. For every man and woman, no matter their creed or color, knows what it is to suffer and to hope. When we weep, we speak the same language. When we dream, we see the same light. The poet, the mother, the worker, and the wanderer—each carries within them the same fragile heart, yearning for connection and peace.

Consider the story of the Christmas Truce of 1914, during the First World War. On that cold December night, soldiers from opposing trenches—British and German alike—laid down their arms. They sang the same carols, shared bread, exchanged small gifts, and spoke as men rather than enemies. For a few brief hours, dreams and anguish overcame ideology. The dream of peace, the anguish of loss, made them see not soldiers but sons, not enemies but fellow souls caught in the same storm. When dawn came, the war resumed—but for that night, the spirit of Ionesco’s truth shone brightly: that the heart unites where ideas divide.

It is a bitter irony that the same anguish that connects us is also what we most fear to face. The world hides from sorrow and pain, building ideologies to protect itself from the rawness of the human condition. But in doing so, it forgets that compassion is born only from vulnerability. To share our anguish is to remember our unity; to share our dreams is to remember our purpose. When the heart is open, even the stranger becomes a brother, and even the divided world becomes whole.

So, my child of thought and heart, take this teaching as both a warning and a guide. Do not worship ideology, for no doctrine can hold the infinite. Seek instead the humanity that lives beneath it—the dreamer in the other’s eyes, the pain that mirrors your own. When you meet someone whose beliefs clash with yours, listen not to their words but to their dreams and anguish, for there you will find your kinship.

For in the end, as Eugène Ionesco reminds us, it is not the mind that saves the world, but the heart. The mind builds nations; the heart builds bridges. The mind separates; the heart heals. And so it shall be through dreams and anguish—through our shared longing and our shared pain—that humanity remembers its oneness. Only then will we awaken from the nightmare of division and dream again as one.