When you’re young, it’s almost a prerequisite that you dream. You build imaginary castles and kingdoms in your backyard, fight monsters in the woods, and consort with fae creatures of every stripe. Most children are allowed at least a few precious years to be silly, be free, be all that you can be. How many of us know exactly what we wanted to be “when I grow up”? I knew a girl who’s dream changed several times a year and I still wonder what she finally ended up deciding on. What happens to so many of us that we lose the luxury of dreams? What hard choices do we make to survive that sometimes leave us with no good choices at all? Somewhere between hopeful child and barely adult a chain reaction of decisions and events coalesce into The Right Thing To Do. During that journey many things get lost along the way. For quite a few of us, those things are our dreams.
It’s a funny thing, how something so integral can be so quickly put away. When need demands it the deed is done in a timely manner, part of the process of coping and making ends meet. And yet, not so long ago, a passion burned inside your heart, with the fire of a thousand suns. You loved to do something, you wanted to be something, something that gave you joy and peace. Stoppered with cork, sealed with tape, locked away in a dusty closet; a quiet ember still glows, you can be sure of it. Do you remember your passion? Does your day to day allow for expression and growth, or does it stifle you with ‘mommy mommy mommy’ and ‘honey, can you’? Do you even bother anymore?
People like us, people like you and me, it seems like we’re not allowed the luxury to dream or create. As if the hardworking every-man, is believed cowed by lack of profitability and therefore immune to a desire for anything more than simple creature comforts. Much like the church once viewed peasants of being incapable of needing, or even wanting, anything more than their hand to mouth existence. Obviously, if you didn’t make the effort to go to college, then you couldn’t possibly want anything more. There is an arrogance to so casually writing off of a person’s dreams, needs, and situations, that staggers me. Worse yet, we feed that assumption. Sedated by television and computers, our eyes stare barely blinking at flickering lights delivering sex, gossip, and violence, cheap vicarious thrills that merely paper over the holes in our souls left by grim compromise. And yet we lament, ‘I have no time’! We rush from one hour to the next until we fall asleep exhausted, perhaps thinking we can make up by doing too much for what we aren’t doing enough of.
I may spend the rest of my life working for someone else, starting my day when they tell me to, coming home after they’re done with me, but the rest of my life is mine. I may spend 2/3’s of my life asleep or working, but the rest I protect fiercely. I set aside, any which way I can, time to do that which fills me with fire. My fingers make needles dance, fingers flying as I craft objects from miles of luxurious string. I use my hands to tease wool into a tightly twisted new form, and mix poisonous dyes to paint brilliant swathes of color on waiting bundles of yarn. I carry my camera with me everywhere, ready in seconds to capture a moment in time, candid studies of everyday beauty. I make lifestyle choices that allow me the time, because without these things, these precursors to my dream, I would slowly become numb and die inside. I may never realize my dream of owning my own shop, or be employed doing exactly what I love for a living, but I make damned sure that what I do on the clock is only so much what I do so I can afford to do the things I love.
It’s never too late to find or rediscover the fire inside yourself, no matter how young or old you are. We each have something inside of us that can lift us out of the every day and make our spirits sing. Do yourself a favor and take the time to dream.
