Rose-Colored Glasses

When you were a child and really wanted something, your parents gave you a reluctant promise of providing it but what did they always say?  "Don't get your hopes up."  Yet our minds' tendency to dream and romanticized things makes this extremely difficult.  Romanticizing the past does nothing but stunt the present.  The more someone thinks and makes the past seem better than it was, the more they want to go back to it.  When this happens, he/she become so infatuated with the past that they stop developing his/her current life.  This is exactly what happens to Gatsby, "He talked a lot about the past, and I gathered that he wanted to recover something...His life had been confused and disordered since then," (Fitzgerald 110).  Another danger of romanticizing the past is the fact that if the past is partially reclaimed (Gatsby at least reunites with Daisy), the romanticized subject is never as impressive as dreamed-up counterpart.  To put this into context, when Gatsby gets Daisy to see his house after having tea at Nick's "Daisy tumbled short of his dreams-not through her own fault, but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion" (Fitzgerald 95). This proves that romanticizing the past does nothing but bring dissatisfaction and the same occurs when the future is romanticized.  Luckily, we tend to do the latter less often but it is still important to "define it[dreams] differently" (Glassner) when times become tough and the dreams move farther out of reach.  The danger with not following Glassner's advice is feeling disappointed whenever our dreams are mostly realized but certain facets are left out.  Dreaming is fine and healthy within reason, but romanticizing the past always keeps us stuck in the past, so our best course of action is keep those "rose-colored glasses" off.

Sources:

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/08/us/08dreampoll.html?_r=0