We all have friends that would consider themselves dreamers. If they don't consider themselves the dreamers and idealists, then you know that they're lying. Obviously. Then we have friends who are more pragmatic and probably be categorized as realists. They're the non-dreamers.

But hey, what do you mean idealist and realist? Is that the same thing as being optimistic or pessimistic? Well, not necessarily.

That's the thing with categorization and labels: sometimes they're arbitrary, sometimes they make sense and sometimes, there are gray areas.

The Dreamer:

This all started because a very close friend of mine asked for my advice on a certain predicament he had. For the sake of this article, we'll call him Phil*. The predicament was that he was unsure of whether to pursue a relationship with a mutual friend of ours (let's call her Jill*) since they've been friends for many years and it was only recently that he start developing feelings for her.

What's stopping him, you ask? What stops everyone from pursuing a relationship: rejection, awkwardness and the potential of ruining a perfectly good friendship.

Phil, here, is the idealist. When we spoke about, he had already told barely a handful of people of the situation and like many of our friends, they provided little to no help at all. When he asked me, I did the same thing as many of our friends would do: I laughed, joked around, gave barely helpful advice, and left him alone to his own devices.

But I asked him if he wanted a straight answer, in the end. He said yes. I said don't do it.

The Non-Dreamer:

I'm the realist. I'm the enemy. Not really.

When I said "don't do it", I thought of the pros and cons. I told him to do the same, of course. When I decided against his idealistic visions, I thought of the present situation. I took into account their friendship, their personality, and also his feelings on the subject.

As the non-dreamer, it'll appear that I'm negative and I never believed in happiness or hope. But that's the problem with hope: it's hard to resist. I think that's the main difference between the idealist and the realist.

For the idealist, hope is a wonderful thing (and there is no argument against it) and should always be pursued. For the realist, hope can only do so much.

The moral of the story?

In the end, the important thing is that these are his feelings, not mine. There's only so much advice and comfort I could give.

As for the dreamer and the non-dreamer: they're not enemies, actually. In fact, I would argue that they are close friends. Because on one side, the realist brings stability to the idealist and the latter shows that having hope isn't a bad thing.

It's okay to hope. It's not okay to hope for too much or too little.