The Dreamer
There is a bakery near where I live. The pastries are good, the coffee is good, and the service is efficient. Yet if I am honest, none of those things is the main reason I go there.
The real reason is a woman from the Dominican Republic who works behind the counter.
I have known her for years, though not in any meaningful sense. Ours is the sort of acquaintance that develops naturally between people who occupy the same corner of everyday life. The baker. The bus driver. The person at the post office. Familiar faces who become part of the landscape of one's existence without ever becoming close friends.
What makes her remarkable is not anything she says or does in particular. It is her mood.
She is always in a good mood.
And I do not mean the professional cheerfulness that some people adopt as part of their job. I mean something far more genuine and far more puzzling. She looks as though she is having one of the best days of her life. Every day.
In a country like Switzerlandd where even spontaneity feels scheduled, her unapologetic happiness is impossible to ignore.
She laughs. She jokes with customers. She tells stories. Sometimes she dances a little while she works. She radiates a kind of enthusiasm that seems entirely disproportionate to the circumstances. After all, she is standing behind a bakery counter, serving coffee and pastries, performing the same routine she has likely performed thousands of times before.
Yet she appears delighted to be there.
After observing this phenomenon for several years, I became curious. Not in a philosophical sense. In a very ordinary sense. I simply wanted to know what was going on.
Was she one of those rare people who are naturally happy? Was she unusually resilient? Did she possess some secret understanding that the rest of us had somehow missed?
I never intended to ask her directly. The opportunity simply emerged one day.
She was wearing a T-shirt with an owl on it. I asked her what the Spanish word for owl was. She told me. I mentioned that owls are often associated with philosophy. She responded with a story about an owl that moved to the rhythm of music. The conversation wandered from one topic to another in the aimless way that pleasant conversations often do.
As I was leaving, I turned around and said, "Have a nice day."
She smiled and answered in Spanish.
"I always have a nice day."
The remarkable thing was that I immediately believed her.
Not because of what she said, but because I had already spent years gathering evidence. If anyone seemed capable of having a good day every day, it was her.
So I asked the obvious question.
"How do you do it?"
I was not asking for wisdom. I was asking for practical information. If somebody has figured out how to enjoy life while standing behind a bakery counter all day, I am interested. Tell me the secret. I would like some of that myself.
Her answer surprised me.
"I am a dreamer."
That was it.
No elaborate philosophy. No self-improvement advice. No discussion of gratitude, mindfulness, positive thinking, or any of the other concepts that usually appear when people explain happiness.
Just four simple words.
I am a dreamer.
I have thought about that answer ever since.
At first glance it sounds almost disappointing. Dreamers do not enjoy a particularly good reputation among adults. We tend to associate them with impracticality, wishful thinking, and a failure to engage with reality. A dreamer, in common usage, is somebody whose head is in the clouds.
But perhaps that interpretation gets things backwards.
Perhaps dreamers are not people who see less reality. Perhaps they are people who see more of it.
Most adults become increasingly practical as they age. We learn to focus on obligations, appointments, deadlines, bills, responsibilities, and problems. The world gradually transforms itself into a collection of tasks that require management.
A bakery becomes a place where bread is sold.
A customer becomes a transaction.
A day becomes a schedule.
Everything acquires a function.
Perhaps dreamers see all of those things as well. They know the bills must be paid and the bread must be sold. But maybe they never entirely lose sight of something else. The story hidden inside the routine. The humour inside the inconvenience. The small absurdities and unexpected possibilities concealed within ordinary life.
Perhaps that is why she appears so happy.
Not because her life is easier than everyone else's.
Not because she has fewer worries.
But because she continues to find the world interesting.
Children possess this ability naturally. They can become fascinated by a puddle, a stick, a cloud, or an insect crawling across a pavement. Their attention is constantly captured by things adults no longer notice. Growing up often means becoming efficient, but it also means becoming blind to large portions of experience.
We stop seeing what is there because we already know what it is.
A dreamer may simply be someone who resists that process.
Someone who continues to notice.
Someone who refuses to reduce life entirely to utility.
I still do not know whether her answer explains everything. Perhaps there is no single explanation. Perhaps she was merely describing her temperament. Yet I suspect there is something important hidden inside those four words.
When I asked her for the secret of her good mood, I expected a technique. Instead she offered a way of looking at the world.
"I am a dreamer."
The longer I think about it, the more profound the answer seems. Happiness may have less to do with what happens to us than with what captures our attention. Two people can inhabit the same world and yet live in entirely different realities because they notice different things.
The dreamer notices possibilities where others notice obstacles. Stories where others see routines. Wonder where others see repetition.
And perhaps that is the lesson.
Life is not only a problem to be solved.
It is also a story to be enjoyed.