I believe that I’m doing the best that I can. I also believe that in order to change I have to do things differently – better. How do I do better if I’m already doing the best that I can?
I need to keep learning.
I need to keep trying.
I need to keep growing.
I’m almost 40 years old and it’s hard to believe that I can learn some new tricks. Mostly, this is because today I’m tired. It was a long day of work, child chauffeuring, and the assorted tasks required to keep our lives going. The day to day work of just getting through the things I have to do makes it hard to imagine going above and beyond to do the things I might want to do.
Some days my imagination fails me, I think I need to dream up a new dream and a new goal, but it’s hard to imagine what that goal might be. I tell myself to dream something rational, something achievable, but that kind of kills the dream. Rational doesn’t work when dreaming.
Dreams are emotional.
Even though DBT talks about balancing emotional mind with rational mind in order to make decisions from wise mind, dreaming isn’t wise. If we limit ourselves to the dreams that make sense, we’re just telling ourselves that we can’t do whatever we decide.
I mean, I probably won’t dream that I can be 5’9″ because that is a physical impossibility, but there’s no reason I can’t dream of being a super model – if that was a dream that I had.
Trying to put reason on dreaming stunts the process and I’m so tired of being stunted by my reality. I want to dream bigger than what my rational mind tells me I can achieve.
But I have no idea where to begin these days. Hence this project – I’m dreaming of finding my voice. Of finding my rhythm and ability to say what I want to say in a way that is interesting, clear, and unique.
But sometimes I don’t even know what I want to say. So how do you make something out of nothing? You can’t. So sometimes dreaming means just setting out with no destination in mind.
It means continuing even when you feel tapped out.
It means facing the blank page and just typing something.
It’s an act of faith – dreaming. Faith that you can cope with what comes (or doesn’t) of those dreams and not letting fear stop you from letting them in.
I think too often we close our minds to the fantastic. I know that since I became an adult it’s hard to come up with those fantastical ideas that I used to have. To find that bottomless well of self-belief and creativity that comes with it.
Because there’s a hubris in dreaming when we’re young. An invincibility that we lose as adults that makes dreaming it all up again so scary and hard. But I’m not losing the faith, despite being tired. I believe that if I continue to sit down and write something will come of it -because I do not accept that I’m actually tapped out.
There are too many dreams stored up in my heart, I just have to be willing to let it wish.
Running for Disney 