Recently, a close friend of mine turned fifty. Over breakfast, he said something that caught me off guard because of how direct it was. He is successful by any normal standard. He heads a strong business, has a great marriage and his children are doing well. Yet he told me that he is still restless. He is still searching for his unique mission in this world, for what he alone is meant to contribute to the destiny of Israel.
That conversation stood in sharp contrast to many others I have had with old friends from high school and college. These are friends who once spoke passionately about changing the world, about leaving a mark that mattered. Today, most of our conversations revolve around careers, mortgages, carpools, and Little League schedules. Don’t get me wrong. Driving carpool and standing on the sidelines of a baseball field are an honorable and holy part of fatherhood. But I cannot shake a quiet sadness when we speak, because something essential in their lives has narrowed. They live as if there is nothing more to yearn for, as if a quiet and respectable life in New Jersey is the full measure of what God expects from us.
The Jewish reggae singer Matisyahu once sang: “Though I’m going gray, I’m still young and having mystic visions of the world.” Most people dream when they are young. But to keep dreaming even when our beards go gray and our hairlines recede, when the bills stack up and the burdens of the day-to-day wear us down? That’s not quite as easy.
Why do some people keep dreaming, while others quietly let them go?
The Bible is filled with dreams. Kings, prophets and even ordinary people dream. But only one man is defined by his dreams, and brings them to fruition: Joseph, the master of dreams.
Should Joseph have told his brothers about his dreams? It’s a matter for debate; perhaps Joseph’s life would have been easier had he kept his dreams to himself. But in the end, every one of Joseph’s dreams came true. He became as powerful as the king of Egypt. The entire world turned to him for sustenance. And as he foresaw, his brothers and father bowed before him. The dreams of his youth became the reality of his middle age.
Many people dream – but few see their dreams fulfilled. Why did Joseph succeed where so many others fail?
The answer appears much later in the story, in a verse that most readers rush past. When Joseph finally stands before his brothers as the ruler of Egypt, the Bible states:
Joseph is not only a dreamer. He is someone who remembers his dreams.
This is not a casual detail. The Zohar explains that remembering a dream is not simply passive recall. It is an act of inner loyalty. “A good dream must be remembered and not forgotten, and then it will come to pass.” Remembering is what allows the dream to move toward realization.
We usually assume that reality is shaped by action – by those who build, decide, fight and execute. And of course this is true. But the Bible insists on something prior. Before anything appears in the physical world, it exists in a hidden inner dimension. This world is only a thin extension of deeper processes already underway.
When we dream, we are not escaping reality. We are noticing something that already exists beneath the surface but has not yet emerged into the world. A dream is the ability to recognize a future possibility as real before it becomes visible or achievable.
But noticing alone changes nothing. Many people sense what could be and still accomplish nothing with it. The decisive difference is remembering.
To remember in this sense does not mean nostalgia or emotional attachment to the past. It means refusing to let a vision fade with time. When a person keeps a future possibility present in his mind and heart, he gives it weight and direction. What exists only as potential begins to press toward reality, until it finally breaks into the present.
This is why Joseph’s life unfolded the way it did. He was sold, imprisoned, forgotten, and humiliated. Any reasonable person in his position would treat the grand dreams of his youth as naive and move on. But Joseph did the opposite. He remembered. He carried his dreams with him into the pit, into the prison, into exile.
Dreams generate reality because the physical world is the fruit of the spiritual world. When a person binds himself consistently to a great dream, he forms something real within the depths of his soul. That inner formation becomes the cause of outward fulfillment.
This is also the deeper meaning of dreaming of redemption. Jewish tradition calls this obligation tzipita l’yeshua, literally, “to actively anticipate salvation.” It is not a feeling and it is not a slogan. It is a demand placed on a person’s inner life.
To dream of redemption means to live with the conviction that history is going somewhere and that God has not abandoned the world to randomness or decay. A person who anticipates redemption does not merely believe that God will one day fix things. He measures the present against the future God has promised and refuses to declare the gap acceptable.
This is why the prophet commands: “You who remind the Lord, give yourselves no rest” (Isaiah 62:6). We don’t need to remind God because God forgets. Rather, we are commanded to keep the future alive in our own consciousness – to remember the future redemption, to remember the goal and purpose of this world. We must speak, think, and act as people who know that God will redeem this world.
Dreaming of redemption shapes how we live today. It determines what we tolerate, what we resist, and what we refuse to normalize. If we truly anticipate redemption, we cannot grow comfortable in exile, corruption, or spiritual smallness. We remember what the world is meant to become and use that memory to shape the present.
Who are the dreamers who never stop dreaming? Who are the dreamers whose visions become reality?
They are the ones who remember, the Josephs who refuse to forget what they once saw. The people who refuse to dismiss their youthful dreams as unrealistic or immature. They are the ones who do not apologize for still wanting something more from life, from their people, and from God Himself. And they are the ones who remember their dreams despite disappointment, delay, and resistance, who will their dreams into reality.
My fifty-year-old friend is not chasing youth, or having a mid-life crisis. He is simply refusing to forget the dreams of his youth. He understands that a comfortable and respectable life is not the same as a meaningful one. He knows that God does not expect us to shrink our aspirations as we age, but to carry them with greater seriousness and discipline. Like Joseph, he remembers what he once saw and refuses to make peace with a present that falls short of it.
Most people do not fail because they lack ability or opportunity. They fail because they forget. But Joseph did not, and neither do those who live with the dream of redemption. They live with the future in mind, and they measure the present against it.
That is how dreams survive time and become reality. We are meant not only to dream bigger, but to remember our dreams long enough to live them.
