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The Dreams of Childhood Are the Realities of Mature Age · Sri Aurobindo Studies

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  Most individuals wind up having to abandon their childhood
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  dreams and aspirations. They follow the career path set
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  before them by their society, their family, their teachers,
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  and their peers. Yet in most cases, they never
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  fully lose their deeper aspiration, which surfaced in
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  their childhood before they were fully indoctrinated in the ways
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  of the world. This may rise as a midlife
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  crisis, as a sense of failure, regret, loss or lack of meaning
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  for their lives, or a turn to alcohol or drugs to dull the
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  inner sense of meaninglessness of how they have invested their
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  lives. Or a feeling of emptiness when
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  they realize that happiness eludes them despite the career,
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  the family, the house, the cars, the bank accounts.
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  In some instances, it leads to a new direction, a new inspiration
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  and a new birth, so to speak, when they realize that they have
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  strayed from their dreams as a child.
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  One individual case we witnessed in the recent past involves
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  someone who came from a highly political family.
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  He was pushed to high office, eventually succeeding to one of
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  the highest positions in the political world.
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  He was not cut out for that life and struggled with it.
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  Eventually he retired and took up art and painting, and one
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  could see the joy he could now express once he could follow his
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  artistic dreams. Not every childhood dream,
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  imagination or aspiration is for spiritual knowledge.
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  Many come with specific dreams to focus on music, art, dance,
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  sports, science, exploration, etcetera, etcetera.
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  Those who are circumstanced to follow their line of approach
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  with the support of their family sometimes can take a very direct
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  route to accomplishment. In other instances, it takes
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  time and much suffering to eventually come back to the
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  vision of youth, the mother observes.
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  Quote. One must have a lively power of
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  imagination, for I seem to be telling you stupid things, but
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  it's quite true. There is a world in which you
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  are the supreme maker of forms. That is your own particular
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  vital world. You are the supreme fashioner
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  and you can make a marvel of your world if you know how to
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  use it, if you have an artistic or poetic consciousness, if you
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  love harmony, beauty, you will build there something marvellous
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  which will tend to spring up into the material manifestation.
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  When I was small, I used to call this telling stories to oneself.
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  It is not at all a telling with words in one's head.
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  It is a going away to this place which is fresh and pure and
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  building up a wonderful story there.
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  And if you know how to tell yourself a story in this way,
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  and if it is truly beautiful, truly harmonious, truly powerful
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  and well coordinated, this story will be realized in your life.
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  Perhaps not exactly in the form in which you created it, but as
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  a more or less changed physical expression of what you made.
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  That may take years, perhaps, but your story will tend to
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  organize your life. But there are very few people
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  who know how to tell a beautiful story, and then they always mix
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  horrors in it, which they regret later.
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  If one could create a magnificent story without any
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  horror in it, nothing but beauty, it would have a
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  considerable influence on everyone's life.
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  And this is what people don't know.
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  If one knew how to use this power, this creative power in
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  the world of vital forms, if one knew how to use this while yet a
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  child, a very small child, for it is then that one fashions his
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  material destiny. But usually people around you,
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  sometimes even your own little friends, but mostly parents and
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  teachers, dabble in it and spoil everything for you so well that
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  very seldom does the thing succeed completely.
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  But otherwise, if it were done like that, with the spontaneous
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  candor of a child, you could organize a wonderful life for
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  yourself. I am Speaking of the physical
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  world. The dreams of childhood are the
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  realities of mature age. End Quote.
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  Reference Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Powers within, Chapter
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  3. Imagination, pages 34 to 35.