When I was younger, I had a very ambitious list of dreams for my older self. I read a lot of books, so naturally I eventually dreamed of being a great author while living in New York City. Rhyming words came easy to me after reading every volume of Shel Silverstein that my local library had, so I toyed with the dream of poetess for a while, and wrote rhymes about my cat.
After listening to the “Hanna Montana 2/Meet Miley Cyrus” albums in a double CD pack from Walmart, I dreamt of being a famous singer and actress in California.
At one point, I wanted to be a journalist.
At another point, I thought I would own a bakery.
Then, I just simply really wanted a horse—nothing more.
After that, I dreamed of owning a giant apple orchard, because it just sounded really quaint and charming.
During a tomboy phase, I thought I would be a famous soccer player. Then a gymnast, then a dancer, a figure skater, then all three, I thought, was not that irrational.
I went back to the author thing for a while, even wrote my ten year old self 70 pages into a fictional novel that was basically an off-brand version of Harry Potter.
I wanted travel, I wanted a bakery-gym combination, I wanted fashion designer, interior designer, yoga teacher, police officer, marine biologist. I thought ballet dancer in Paris sounds nice, but so does environmental scientist in the rain forest.
And what was crazier than the chaos of my future goals was the fact that I not only believed them all possible, but them all possible simultaneously. Why couldn’t I write a novel while living on an apple orchard while taking dance classes as I also worked as a police officer and spent my spare time riding a beautiful horse and researching the effects of ocean pollution on dolphins? I would be busy, yes, but doing it all—I mean, really doing it all—surely wouldn’t be an issue. I could multitask!
As I got older, though, the merry-go-round of dreams slowed and became slightly more realistic. Maybe I would join the Peace Corps, be a doctor, maybe teach fitness classes, I could travel for business. Some remnant aspirations from childhood lasted through this slower phasing, but they were without attachment to a concrete career.
I had posters of Paris and New York push-pinned to the walls of my room for a long time, suggesting that I would always want to explore—but I did not know how I would find the means to. I continued to write and journal, evidencing that I did love to move words around—but I didn’t know why it meant so much.
And slower and slower the phases came and left. Even the posters came down and the journals shoved to the back of the closet, until the aching want in me, the yearning to do it all, just… settled. And eventually, the dreaming, aspiring and fantasizing stopped altogether.
I believe this happens to everyone as they leave childhood and begin to come of age. One becomes so wrapped up in planning each moment, with the thought of the next moment in mind, that they became lost. I did not feel lost, though. I still had goals: get my degrees, get apartment, get job. Shallower ones, too: get thinner, get clothes, get likes. Daily ones like: get to class, get groceries, get some sleep. I was mistaking my goals as dreams, confusing obtaining for succeeding, and it just became that my imagination was being squandered by sobering realism, my presence shoved aside for seeming practicality.
At what point did my idea of adulthood go from vibrant, wild and thrilling to, essentially, daydreaming about basic survival? I was lucky enough to have been born into the right era and the right socioeconomic class that allowed me the privilege to dream beyond having basic survival needs, and all I was using it for was diets, mascara and a small apartment with beige carpet.
I don’t know what caused this change, and maybe it was more of a progression than a pivotal moment, but that wasting is what it became for the longest time, until it landed at a full-circle point again. There was a process to return to dreaming, definitely. I am not sure if I meditated consistently enough or stared at the ocean long enough or started eating carbs shamelessly enough or stared hard enough at the superficiality I had let my privilege become, or what. But I began to dream again. Up came a flood of childhood dreams. I was shocked they were still there, angry at myself for forgetting them, ashamed at myself for not achieving them. I’d had all that time, all gone now, and I could have been living my inner child’s idea of my best life.
Once I accepted that loss of time and self, though, I realized I could also feel thankful that these daydreams weren’t completely lost. I hadn’t strayed so far from the earliest versions of myself for so long that I had no hope of return or restoration. So I offered myself some understanding, and visited each of the dreams, revived them one by one by asking myself, “What is this? Do I still want this? Why? Why not?”
Some revival periods were extremely brief. No, I do not want a horse. Why? Well, they kind of scare me now. And no, I will not be a cop. Why? Well, I would believe anything anyone says to me (“Of course you were alone in your house the night of the crime! My mistake, so sorry for asking…”). And some periods were longer and more distressing in the level of self-examination they required.
Well, why couldn’t you join the Peace Corps? Are you afraid of hardship, are you not brave enough to go? Don’t you want to help people? Well, yes, but there are people to help no matter where you are… Some revivals turned into fully-restored renewals. Yes, I want to travel, because I want to learn. Yes, I want to write, because it feels therapeutic. Yes, I want to help others. And on it went. On it continues to go! I keep revisiting old fantasies, or I build on them and branch from them to make new ones. I allow myself to dream again.
However, the return of daydreaming about my future is not a frenzy anymore. It is less about the product, and more about the process. To me, dreaming now is an exercise in positivity, a product of hope, an incitement of compassion and empathy. When we acknowledge, respect, entertain the dreams within us, we can do the same for others. Tenderly embracing our imaginations only leads us to the realization that we are not singular in having hope and desire and fantasy.
When we tell ourselves, you know what, why not? I am courageous enough to imagine. I am the designer of my reality, and can make it as fantastical as I want. I am capable enough to work towards a dream, if not for fruition, at least for hope. At least for optimism.
At least for the empathy it stirs in me for others. Then we can say all of these same things to others. Dreaming inspires us to be compassionate to ourselves, and to everyone else. When we dream, and see the dreams in the others, we can work to lift everyone to a place that allows the privilege of big dreams, we can work together to evolve shared dreams into shared realities, and we can give each other the kindness and selflessness that hope will always spark.
So I hope that, with all the time, all the reorganization of values, all the changes to lives everywhere that these slower times have brought, we will all make the effort to think back to childhood dreams, entertain them for a bit—maybe just to let them go, or maybe to revive them completely.
We can think back, compare our dreams now to our dreams then, do you and little-you still want the same things? We can contemplate those things to be sure that we are not making the mistake of wasting our privilege, dismissing our capabilities, mistaking wounds as goals, as in: if we dream of money what lies below that? Is it a need for freedom? If we dream of fame, is it really a need for validation and acknowledgement?
I now dream of us all being able to dream big, true, freeing dreams. There are no rules, no judgments to be made, no doubts to be had when we imagine our lives, because I believe if we are hopeful enough and hard-working enough and compassionate enough—and I know that the little cop-apple orchard owner-popstar-baker-yogi-poet-traveler-soccer player-horse rider, in me agrees—that, together, we can do it all.
