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Vörösmarty Mihály, picture made by unknown author

Daydreaming perverts life. Is it true? I think it is a stupid sentence, and the poet, who they say the quote is from, has never written such a vulgar idea.

I started collecting quotes in 2009, in the United States. You can collect quotes for many reasons. School teachers usually pick up quotes to use them for teaching, or for using them to demonstrate their literacy. My reason is personal, and I was inspired by Chinese fortune cake.

It happened in Nashua, we went for a walk after diner, which was unusual there, as I understood later. As I experienced, most American people don't like walking at all, and there were no pavements in the town, except in downtown and around malls.

Anyway, Nashua people told us that Nashua was the most boring town of the world. Perhaps, because they experienced it from their cars.

As I was not accustomed to the constant chili wind, I soon began to feel cold, and we went into the closest place to drink something hot. It was a Chinese restaurant, where they didn't really understand why we wanted to drink only a tea and a coffee, and not to eat something. They were kind, and gave us fortune cake. I like this cake, because it makes you feel as if the quote which is in it is personally for you. Otherwise, I don't remember the quote I got at that time. But I remember well the one I found in a candy, Dove Promises. “If you can dream it, you can do it.”

At that very moment I summarized my experience about socialization and training of young people in my country. Schools and adults in our society make children forget their dreams and force them to forget daydreaming at all. That is why a lot of people don't even dare to use imagination and make plans about what he would like to be or to do. Hungarian schools have a poem of Mihály Vörösmarty in curriculum, which is a must to learn for every pupil. Two lines from it are often quoted. “Ábrándozás az élet megrontója, Mely, kancsalúl, festett egekbe néz.” (A merengőhöz, 1843) “Daydreaming, which looks into painted skyes squintly, deteriorates/perverts life.” Adults teach children that these lines means that you will be unhappy if you daydream. But this is a sloppy interpretation of this text, and as such, it can merely teach young children that adults are unable to read a poem profusely. But an adult is an authority for a child here, and not a partner in most of the time. So if a child observes that there is a more precise meaning in these lines, he is usually punished.

Vörösmarty lived in our neighbor village in the 19^th century. Anyway, he retired to the country from social life, because he was disappointed with Hungarian politicians. Most of his co-workers forgot even that he had ever been on Earth. Now they use his great poems to make young children hate literature and to drive this fact home: you have no future, and don't even dream about it.