Lose your dreams and you might lose your mind.

The words of Mick Jagger — “Lose your dreams and you might lose your mind.” — strike like a song sung from the soul of eternity. Simple in rhythm yet profound in truth, they echo the wisdom of the ancients disguised in the voice of a modern bard. Jagger, who rose from the restless youth of rock and rebellion, speaks here not merely of music, but of the human condition. To lose your dreams is not to lose mere ambitions — it is to lose the flame that gives life its light, to extinguish the sacred fire that keeps the spirit awake in the dark. For the dream is not an ornament of life; it is its heartbeat. Without it, the mind drifts into emptiness, and the soul, unanchored, begins to unravel.

From the beginning of time, mankind has been sustained by dreams — visions of what could be rather than what is. The builders of the pyramids, the voyagers who crossed uncharted seas, the thinkers who gazed into the stars — all were dreamers who refused to live within the confines of the present. They believed in something unseen, and that belief gave them strength greater than armies. Thus, when Jagger warns of losing one’s dreams, he is not speaking as a musician to his fans, but as a prophet to humankind: abandon your vision, and you will abandon your reason for being. For the mind, deprived of purpose, becomes its own tormentor — it feeds on doubt, on fear, on regret.

Consider the life of Vincent van Gogh, the painter whose art was born from suffering yet illuminated the world. Though poor, misunderstood, and haunted by despair, he never ceased to dream — to see beauty where others saw only fields, to capture light even as his own life grew dark. When at last his hope faltered, and his dreams dimmed, his mind succumbed to the shadows. In losing his dream, he lost himself. Yet his legacy, painted in swirls of gold and blue, reminds us that dreams are the soul’s defense against madness. They give form to pain, direction to passion, and meaning to existence.

Mick Jagger, who lived in the tempest of fame and excess, understood this danger intimately. Surrounded by noise, wealth, and illusion, he saw how easily men could drown in their own success once they forgot the dream that first set them free. For when dreams turn to ashes, even triumph feels hollow. To lose your dreams is to lose your compass — and when the mind drifts without direction, it collapses under the weight of its own emptiness. The ancients called this “the madness of the spirit” — when the soul forgets why it was born, and begins to devour itself.

Yet Jagger’s words carry not despair, but warning — and within that warning, hope. For dreams can be rekindled, no matter how far one has strayed. The spark that once burned may sleep, but it never dies. The man who thinks himself lost need only look inward, recall his first fire, and breathe life into it again. Even in ruin, even in old age, the act of dreaming restores the mind’s strength. To dream again is to begin again. It is the secret of renewal — the path by which mortals touch eternity.

The lesson, then, is this: guard your dreams as you would guard your sanity. Nourish them, speak them aloud, shape them with your hands. Let them grow, even when mocked by others or delayed by hardship. Do not trade them for comfort, nor bury them beneath fear. For when your dream lives, your mind lives; and when your dream dies, your mind begins to decay. Dreams are not luxuries — they are necessities, the invisible threads that bind the heart to the divine.

And so, remember, O listener of time: never let your dreams fade, no matter how heavy the years, no matter how deep the darkness. For it is your dream that keeps your soul young, your spirit unbroken, and your mind sane amid the chaos of the world. As the ocean needs the moon to move its tides, so the mind needs the dream to move its will. Protect it, pursue it, live through it — for the dreamer who endures shall not only keep his mind, but touch immortality itself.