Dreams

I think about the way things would have been, sometimes when I am just alone in the middle of the day or when I’m riding in my car and the radio is turned down low for no reason. I think about the value of things and the things I value and I wonder if the road I’m on will lead to any of the things I need, let alone want.

A dream is a scary thing to have, because we have hope for them. We want them to come true—even when we don’t strive for them. So when we fail, it strikes us…hard. For me having goals and dreams is like saying there’s a chance at failure. I could want to be somewhere more exciting, but in hoping for it I still might never get there. I could want to be a writer, a dreamer, a intellectual—but in trying for those things I still might never have them.

Fear could be said to be my motivating factor in these decisions, but really its failure. Without failure, or the chance of it, I would have no fear. If we knew that in our potential to do something that we dreamed of there was a guaranteed success, we’d always choose to do it. 

Then the question becomes, how do we force ourselves to act on dreams? How do we tell the viable dreams from the ones we should let go? And when is it not okay to dream?

There’s no great handbook on this. There’s no answer out there for these questions.