The middle of the year seems to bring out introspection and resolution-making a little more readily for me than New Year’s Day does. I think it’s the frightening realization that I’ve let yet another half of a year slip by, and if the other half of the year goes as fast as the first half did I’ll be left wondering what exactly it was I did with that year, and why I didn’t make more of it.
I’ve been talking with a lot of people about their dreams of late – not the ones that come to you in your sleep, although those can be really interesting too – but more about their ideas of the future for themselves. What did they want to be when they grew up? What did they imagine their lives would be like? How have their dreams morphed over time? What are they dreaming about now?
When I was about 12 someone gave me a large, hard-covered book filled with blank pages of quality paper. I wrote poetry in it, penned some short stories here and there, painted with water color on some of the pages. I drew with pen and ink on a lot of them (I went through a lengthy pen and ink phase thanks to my Drawing and Painting teacher in high school), and among these ink drawings were several pages with front, back, and inside views of my dream house, drawn in great detail.
I haven’t seen that book recently; it must be around somewhere in a box or in a closet, stuck among other fragments from my past. The thing is I can remember exactly what I wanted that house to look like. I’ve thought about it off and on over the years, and have always known that if I happened into a lot of money, that would be the house that I would build. And I would have to BUILD it, because, of course, it is unique enough not to be anything that one would find in a typical neighborhood. Back when I drew it, I wanted to build it in Chino Valley, AZ. Now I’m not so sure where it would go, but I’m fairly certain Chino Valley isn’t in the mix anymore.
I spent a lot of time at the ages of 12-14 or so, day dreaming, doodling, writing, and learning to do what I now recognize as planning. It was a zone in which I felt really peaceful and happy. The times in life when I’ve been the most productive and successful are those that have provided me with an opportunity to get into that zone to dream and create. When I was a teacher, planning was the best part of the job to me. I enjoyed linking subjects, ideas, curriculum requirements and activities together to build a lesson. The implementation was fulfilling, of course, and the students were always surprising and wonderful, but what gave me the most pleasure was the planning, where my imagination got to take over for awhile.
Sometimes in the implementation of a lesson plan one bumps up against realities for which even the best curriculum specialists were not prepared…but that just helps to refine the next lesson. And after talking to people about their dreams, I see that there are times when this is the case in the rest of life as well.
I once worked for a Department Chair at a university who had been a life-long political advocate, an Ombudsman, an extremely intelligent, tireless negotiator, a champion of the poor and downtrodden, steadfast enemy of big business and greed, a professor and esteemed researcher. He had spent most of his life in school, from kindergarten on up through his PhD, and remained there afterward doing research, writing, and teaching in the academic world until he was at the apex of his chosen field of study. He had virtually no experience with the lives of those for whom he was championing causes - until he had a heart attack. As a part of his recovery, he was required to attend rehab sessions and counseling with others in his relatively small college town who were also on the mend. One of the great shocks of his life was to rub shoulders with the ‘average Joe’; to learn who Joe was, what he believed, how he lived. The experience sent this learned man’s world view topsy-turvy. It didn't deter him from his dreams, but there was a lot more soul-searching and less saturated fat in his life after that.
One friend told me that he doesn’t feel that goals and dreams are the same thing at all. He always keeps his dreams a little bit ahead of his goals…a little loftier, a little less achievable. That’s the strategy that works best for him. I asked him once if he thought his life shaped his dreams, or his dreams shaped his life. He said that dreams have shaped his life. I think he is a lucky man. There are some people who have had the luxury of knowing precisely what their dreams were, aiming directly for them, and then watching life step aside and offer a wide, friendly berth as they reached them. But I think those people are rare. I don’t know too many, and I frankly haven’t asked any of them what it is they think they may have given up or missed by traversing their path so easily and steadily in life. I’m afraid that might sound like a bitter question.
IS that a bitter question? What I wonder is this: For most of us, do our dreams change simply out of laziness? Circumstance? Opportunity? I just don’t want to fall into the “if you can’t be with the one you love (honey) love the one you’re with” mentality…letting go of a dream simply because it isn’t easy or practical, or because it seems unattainable, then opting for something less daunting or less risky.
It seems to me that most of the rest of us are either a mixture of the purposeful and the dreamer, or just flat-out dreamers. The driven, purposeful, goal-setter in me is a sporadic part of my personality, visiting once or twice a year at best. As a result, there have been plenty of times in my life when I was buffeted around and pushed into places I didn’t expect to be. More often than not I’ve landed in a situation that has been interesting, that I might never have CHOSEN to be in, but one that taught me a lot, introduced me to a slice of society different from my own, and re-shaped me to the point of re-shaping my dreams.
This year my ‘resolution season’ seems to find me at a juncture where my purposeful self is competing with the dreamer in me. From past experience I know that the goal-setter version tends to prevail when she actually deigns to make an appearance. But I’ve got six more months until the next New Year’s Eve comes along, and plenty of time for twirling in the cosmic eddys that catch me up from time to time, so who knows what it is I’ll be dreaming about by December 31st?
I think I need a new pen and ink, and a nice, fresh tablet!
P.S. This article was sent to me by one of my more creative friends. It gives the scientific spin on all of the above...and then some. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/29/science/29tier.html
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