Dreams

A note beforehand:

(This blog is interesting to me.

I have not touched it in months, and as I look back on my previous two posts I realize that the times when I am most likely to write something on here is when I am most stressed about life. Or when I have some revelation based on circumstances around me that have been less than desirable.

I apparently don't write when things are going well.

I don't know how to feel about that. I mean, a blog should be a journal, right? A look into my thoughts and insights put down in cyberspace whether or not times are good or bad. I think it should.

So I apologize, dear reader, for what you are about to read. I hope that it does not come across as either a rant, or venting, or anything of the sort, though my track record thus far is far from ideal.

I do not mean to give the impression that my thoughts are always about dark subjects, or that my life is terrible in any shape or form. More has happened this year to me on the good side of things than I could ever have hoped for. I have, as the cliche goes, much to be thankful for.

That being said, I have had much time lately to think. Circumstances around me have been less than ideal. And unfortunate as it may be to you, my reader, I most often get the writing itch when circumstances are such. I will make this vow to you: in the future I will be more attentive to this journal. I will not write solely about the bad. I will be sure to report to you the good thing, the happy times, and the bright and shining moments of life. I will write. Bear with me as we travel, at the moment, through a somewhat dark time.

And with that, into the mind of a young person, a traveler, a people watcher, an athlete, and a writer we delve...)

Dreams have always fascinated me. I do not speak of goals, necessarily. Though I do think that goals are a necessary component of dreams being realized and fulfilled. Goals have the connotation of being a task one sets for oneself, whether it be to get a good grade on a test, or land a better paying job. They are task oriented, an exercise in accomplishing something in order to write a check mark onto a list.

Dreams I think are different, though the difference is subtle. A dream is what life one wants above all else. A vision of a way of life, and of the feelings that way of life will give to the dreamer. A dream is, in a sense, very heavily dependent on vision. Details are not as important as the overarching, all encompassing vision that one sees. Details, I think, are where the goal aspect comes in. We will not concern ourselves overmuch with details in this exercise of thought.

Dreams are as unique and concretely individual as the dreamers which envision them. A boy may dream of being an NFL star one day, or a man might dream of one day being the father of children. Dreams are, I think, what we believe will fulfill us. The kind of life where the dreamer could go to his deathbed with a feeling of accomplishment. Where doest he feeling of accomplishment and satisfaction come from? I believe ideally it would come from a sense of knowing what one wants out of life, and seizing it.

Dreams, then, require a lot of soul searching. Finding out what one really wants is at times almost as difficult as achieving it. Dreams are realizing what drives us most, in our deepest of hearts. What keeps us going, what gets us out of our beds in the morning. The dream of being a football star could in fact not be that the young boy really wants to knock others heads off for a living, but wants to be the center of attention, to be famous, to feel loved and ultimately accepted. Unpacking the deeper meaning of a goal is what a dream is all about.

I am human. Therefore, I dream.

I dream of spending the rest of my life with a woman I love dearly. I dream of experiencing life with her on the most intimate of levels. I dream of having children with that woman. Of raising them to see and appreciate life. To follow their own dreams. And of being such a man that at my funeral many people will have many good things to say about me.

So what is the dream within the dream? Within the goal?

In actuality, I dream of being loved. Of not being alone. Of feeling a closeness with another human being that cannot be matched anywhere else. Of leaving a legacy both in the physical sense of my children, and the memories that they and others have of me.

Words are so easy. Dreams are not.

Working towards a goal is easy. Visualizing the dream behind the goal is not.

So many things happen. There are no guarantees in life, other than sometime during it, you will go through hardship. The dream will seem, at some point, unattainable.

The hardest about dreaming is to continue to do it.

So how do we react? It would be easy to modify our dreams, to change them to some other vision in order to conform with the mold life seems to force us in to. And here we again come to the ugly details. The nasty, nitty-gritty practical side of things. What I think we realize, as life continues, is that our dreams may not be what we first envisioned. The details which we had in some form or another envisioned or hoped for may not turn out the way we had hoped. I would even submit that it is impossible for them to do so.

It is here, I think, that we must (to avoid being cliche) hold true to ourselves. If we have delved into the deepest depths of our hearts when we envision our own dreams, if we have figured out what it really is that makes us tick, then the details are irrelevant. If we hold onto what it is we really want out of life, out of our own lives, then it is impossible for the details to not satisfy us. True, they may not be what we had thought they would, but what does it really matter?

Too much I think people dream without knowing really what they want. The football star may have dreamed about fame and glory, only to discover that in the end he is left empty, simply because what he really wanted was not to be famous, but to be loved by someone. In his case, the details in his vision where attached to a dream that was not really his.

So you may ask, dear reader, what is my point? I submit to you this. Figure out what it is that you want.

Delve into the dark, scary, but enlightening place that is your soul. And once you do that..

Dream.

And dream huge.

But realize this, as you do.

The dream is the end. All the details are the means. They will most likely not fall into place as you had once envisioned. But it will not matter. The dream that you hold on to with your very being will take you to places you could never have envisioned on your own.

Dreams are not concerned with the details, with the practical side of things.

They cannot afford to be.