Thought Cookie: Edition 22: Vol. 3
What dreams do you hold
in the tender spaces
of your heart?
name them quickly, dear,
and feel them out,
memorize the scent of their sweet hair
and the hold of their chunky hand.
The adults are coming,
with their plansforyourfuture
and their blunted realities.
They will wave the dreams away
believing they are only made of smoke.
But you and I will know, forever,
they are made of gold.
I love you,
Emily
There’s another pandemic going on. It’s happening right under the thick and pervasive layer known as the novel coronavirus.
This pandemic is what I am calling the disowning of our dreams.
As a small child, I had big dreams. A fiery Aries, I saw myself in big bold creative adventures, dripping with success and living an unapologetic, full-throated emotional life of soaring highs and gritty lows.
Like many kids, as I got older I dared to share those dreams with the people I loved. That’s when I learned to be embarrassed by them.
After all, who did I think I was?
Why did I think my dreams could come true when so many others failed?
Didn’t I realize millions of other, more talented people had similar dreams?
Wasn’t I aware that the road to my dreams would be harsh, difficult and filled with menial work?
Dreams might have a childish role in creating joy and fostering imagination, I was taught, but they had little to do with my actual life.
Little by little, I let go of the red balloon of my dreams. I learned that dreams ultimately lead to heartbreak.
Instead, I adopted what was presented to me: education and hard work. Being an Aries, I developed a work ethic as brutal as a machete. And I threw my eager mind into a rigorous education.
It took me until my late 30s and early 40s to begin reclaiming – in small ways – my dreams.
There’s a lot of heartbreak in that process of reclaiming: forgiveness and grief and regret and wistfulness and remembering and projecting.
It’s work of the heart – because all of those emotions must be processed until you can actually excavate the dream and begin working on one or two of them again.
That has been the work of the last ten years of my life. I’ve made some progress along the way, because breathing life into my dreams has been what’s been happening alongside my other work, which has kept the roof overhead and the bills paid.
When the pandemic took hold of our spirits, minds and hearts (as well as our bodies), we first resorted to ideas of a quick “return to normal.” Even as we cancelled plans and shelved ideas, and got protective about our health, our families, our communities, we held hope this would be a short detour.
Hope is first-cousins with dreams.
As the first year wore on, we began to fight. In fighting mode, we fought for our ideals and became identified with them in a way we hadn’t before. If that meant cancelling on our next round of plans, we did it. If it meant scaling back what we “would have done” in so many different contexts: career, family, travel, friendships, community work, volunteering – we did it.
We were convicted.
The vaccines stoked hope – and our dreams peeked out sheepishly from behind that hope.
As we turned the bend on the first wave and hope began stepping into the room and removing her coat, a second, then third wave walloped both our emerging hope and our greatly weakened dreams right in the solar plexus and sent them flailing backward in a heap.
And so, I think many of us, without even knowing it – canceled on ourselves.
To survive emotionally, we canceled a lot of our hope. We reached instead for our good old pals, caution, skepticism, and his buddy, doubt, and kept all three very close.
We numbed up.
Because numbness works better than hope sometimes for the tender of heart. For a little while, at least.
In the midst of all of this, our dreams were unceremoniously ushered out the back door into the dark, cold forest.
Did you do this? I know I have.
I’m rediscovering dreams at the moment: turning them over in my mind, heart and hands and wondering what role they will play in my life. I’m letting them whisper to me. I’m assessing what continuing to hold them in my scarred hands will cost me, and what it might bring me. I am considering the role they play in my life. And I’m taking baby steps again.
Dreams are childish. That’s what makes them wonderful. And powerful.
This is particularly true if you, like me, consider your childhood wisdom of self to be the purest era of knowing who you are.
No one can make you recommit (even in tiny ways) to your dreams. It’s an entirely sovereign and self-serving (in the best way) decision.
But if we collectively bin our dreams – what hope can rise? What future can be made? What heart can beat again? What pandemic will rage on and on and on?