Realists vs. Dreamers

Happy Thanksgiving Eve!

I'm very excited that tomorrow I get to celebrate my favorite of all holidays. As I like to say "What could be better than Thanksgiving? You get to eat and say Thank you. What else do you need?"

I was going to write a post about being thankful, which I may still do, but TV viewing this evening has changed my focus. Craig and I enjoyed a nice evening at home this evening hanging out and watching some TV. We're late to the party, but we've discovered that we really enjoy Modern Family. We have a DVR full of episodes that we need to catch up on, but this evening we were able to watch the new episode.

For those of you who watch but haven't seen tonight's episode, this blog contains "spoilers," so you may need to stop reading now until you've seen the episode.

Now that I've given my disclaimer, tonight's episode focused around Thanksgiving, and began with a former neighbor of Phil and Claire's coming to visit. The nieghbor had become quite successful for taking risks and is now an entrepenuer with his hands in several different businesses. He made a statement that when faced with a decision, he would ask what Phil would do in that situation, and then he'd do it.  This set up the basic premise of the entire episode.

Claire was focusing on getting the Thanksgiving dinner and festivities together in her typical Type A style. She needed Phil to get things together for the dinner, and each time he'd come up with a unique or creative idea she would have to shoot him down and get him to do what she wanted for the dinner. Phil came to decide that Claire was squashing all of his creativity.

In a side plot line, Cam was feeling upset after he told his famous "Chuckin Punkin" story and Mitchell told him it wasn't a believable story and he shouldn't waste people's time telling some of his stories. Cam felt like Mitchell didn't support him and didn't believe his stories were true.

And in the third side story, Jay and Gloria argued over whether Manny needed to hear constructive criticism after creating a Thanksgiving centerpiece. Jay didn't think the centerpiece was one of Manny's better projects, but Gloria praised him and told Jay she had always been put down by her mother and she didn't want Manny to hear anything negative as it would break his spirit.

All three plot points were played out quite nicely with several big laughs, as they typically are on the show. The culmination of all three story points came to a head at the Thanksgiving dinner, as the Pritchett family members took the side of the realists, while their respective spouses/families took the role of the dreamers. When Cam made a comment about his Chuckin Punkin story, which all of the family had heard several times, Cam mentioned that Mitchell didn't believe this story could actually have taken place. So to settle it once and for all, the family decided to go and "chuck" a pumpkin to see if it truly could have flown clear across a football field.

In the end of course, the pumpkin didn't fly as far as Cam had always said it did. But instead of gloating about being right, the Pritchett's realized they didn't feel good proving the dreamers wrong, and ended up encouraging them to keep trying to make it happen. With their combined efforts the pumpkins flew farther and farther.

I think this is a great message to be reminded of from time to time. I think that in most situations I have a decent balance of dreamer and realist in my decision making process. I'd like to say that in most situations though the dreamer side of me wins out. Craig and I discussed this and he is definitely more of a realist, but he has his dreamer moments too. When we work together we often end up successful.  There was a great line in the show tonight that basically said " The realists are there to keep the dreamers from flying directly into the sun, and the dreamers are there to help the realists get off the ground."

This has me thinking about what are the dreams I have that I'm not trying to make happen because I'm letting the reality of the situation get in the way, and also about the things that I could improve by dreaming a bit more than I do now. I wonder what I could accomplish by realizing my dreams, and I wonder what my followers could do if they followed their dreams too. What an exciting world we'd live in if we all stopped just thinking about our dreams and started making them happen.

But to keep myself balanced, I think I'll keep my realist around. If nothing else, he'll be there to celebrate with me when I do accomplish my dreams. :)