Having a dream is always tricky.
I am a planner. I have my calendar on my desk and my family calls it “The Book by which all things are reckoned!” I keep up with appointments for Tim and me, I have theatre tickets, business cards, and more stuffed between the pages. I probably would grab this book and my cat in a fire! I would be lost without it.
I am not very good at spontaneity. I have tried to get better, and I am. Somewhat. But if you ask me to do something spur of the moment, I will probably say no.
I do have the days on the calendar pretty full right now. Today is the first day I have had in a couple of weeks to get something done at home and to write. Between starting on rehearsals for a new play and the upcoming holidays, most days and nights are full.
In the midst of all of that busyness, I have seen a few dreams die and I have to say it is difficult.
Planning for things on your calendar is fairly easy. It is a tangible thing, written down. You have a date and time. Sure- things can get cancelled, but for the most part you know that you will have lunch with friends at 11:30, a doctor’s appointment at 2, the plumber stopping by at 4 and a play to see at 7:30. It is planned, it is happening.
You pick out your clothes to suit your plans for the day. You know what time you need to leave your home to get to where you need to be at a specific time. It is all real and it mostly all happens according to plan.
Dreams that we harbor in our hearts are somewhat the same and yet very different. We plan. We get ready. We daydream about what will happen, how things might go. We work towards something that isn’t on the calendar, because we aren’t sure at the beginning when or where or how it might happen. We think of new ideas, we get excited about the possibilities, we pray that what we can only imagine will become reality.
We do what we can to make what seems impossible happen. We gather information, we talk to those closest to us about our hopes, our dreams. We long for a sign that we are on the right path.
Following a nonexistent path to a dream is one that only the strongest can continue. The weak at heart give up too soon.
But when is too soon? When do you make the decision to quit pushing towards that pie in the sky that you can taste only in your imagination.
I have watched a friend work towards a dream, watched her take all of the steps, build up all of the hope only to have it disappear into thin air. To have to give up and move on.
I myself have had to let go recently and it makes you wonder if you tried hard enough, if you worked smartly enough, if you gave it all that you could. You wonder, are you courageous enough? It makes you feel as if you lost something, even though to the outside world there was never anything there to begin with.
We all have had dreams that were just not realistic. We all ask, “What would we do if we won the billion dollar power ball?” even when we haven’t bought a ticket. We imagine ourselves up there winning the Grammy, even if we don’t sing. We imagine all kinds of things that can never happen.
But when you actually see that it is possible and you work towards that end, realizing that things just aren’t going to go as planned is like suffering a loss. Mourning something that no one else saw or felt is tricky and tough.
We have to hope that there is another plan. That it is for the best that things didn’t go as dreamed. We have to know somewhere inside of us that there must be a bigger dream, a better dream, waiting for us.
It might not look anything like what we had imagined. It might be 180 degrees in the opposite direction. It might not be something we ever thought of for ourselves.
If I don’t keep the hope that there is something else waiting for me, another dream that I just haven’t had yet, another chance for this dream to resurface when the time is right, for something even better, beyond what my lowly brain can think, then I don’t know how to proceed.
The plans on my calendar are there in red, green, and purple ink. Some are in pencil because I am realistic enough to know the people who will continually cancel on me at the last minute. The plans I have kept in my heart and in my imagination are harder to erase. They take a little chunk of my heart with them when I put them away.
What we think we want makes way for what will be.
