A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes

Written and composed by Mack David, Al Hoffman and Jerry Livingston

• A dream is a wish your heart makes
• When you’re fast asleep
• In dreams, you will lose your heartaches
• Whatever you wish for, you keep

• Have faith in your dreams and maybe someday
• Rainbow will come shining through
• No matter how your heart is grieving
• If you keep on believing
• Then the dream that you wish will come true

The original version of this was written for the Walt Disney film Cinderella (1950). When I first listened to the rendition by British artist Puma Blue, I was completely captured by its darker tones and soft vocals. I really did feel like I was in a dream.

I find it pretty interesting how the imaginary dreams we experience when we sleep came to be associated with the concrete goals we hope to achieve in reality (We often say “My dream is to be a pilot”). I barely dream in my sleep at all, but I think about my goals in reality a lot. Perhaps sometimes even obsessively so. I often wonder why I place so much importance on the goal itself. It seems a bit arbitrary to me: you can always keep asking “Why did you set this goal?”, find a reason (usually another goal), and you just end up with another goal to pursue. I guess its turtles all the way down.

So maybe the solution is to pick one turtle and be happy with it. I think the top one is the cutest.