Choosing our Dreams...or Not

I've been considering dreams and particularly which ones that I will consciously keep and others that I will intentionally let die.  I've discovered that it isn't as easy as I expected.

First there are a host of dreams that I've actually achieved.  Consider joining three cousins in being the first generation in our family to graduate from college.  Actually, you could even say "go" to college, but we also graduated.  It was a very big deal for me, since it took me 22 years after I started college before I graduated.

Then, there was getting a graduate degree.  I think I was the first in my family to do that.  That allowed me to get the kind of professional work that I had dreamed about.  That was followed by the dream to work globally, which I did 25 years ago and to publish a book, then two, which I did almost 20 years ago.  What I discovered is that there were a lot of these dreams that once I achieved them, their completion left something of a vacuum that I never consciously either replaced or celebrated and really en-joyed.

Somewhat disturbing to me are some material dreams that were very important to me in my twenties and early thirties.  The big house with a pool. Lenox china and Waterford crystal.  Later the big house in the woods on a lake.  There was the Jaguar XKE.  It really was a lot of fun to drive and watch heads turn when I drove down the street.  Having grown up in a lower middle class neighborhood, maybe just having the heads turn was a dream.  As I reflect on these dreams, they hardly seem worthy of being a dream.  Yet, they occupied a lot of psychic space for a number of years.

I've also recalled the dreams that fall in the category of "be careful what you wish for."  Thank you, God, that many of those dreams didn't come true.  The relationships that I wished wholeheartedly would materialize, and in retrospect, I know they would have been horrible mistakes.  Even the relationship I was certain would resurrect itself after 20 years (its been 22) now seems like it would never have worked.

Similarly, there were jobs or even employers that I was certain would have been perfect.  Later I worked with people from those companies and discovered that the work those companies did wasn't a good fit for my skills or the culture wouldn't have been nurturing for me.

I've had purpose dreams: I dreamed that I could make the world a better place and even visualized what it would look like when we all loved each other. A ribbon of love that connects the whole world from heart to heart. In times when there is a mass shooting almost daily in the US and some really big ones, like Paris and San Bernardino, not that uncommon, and when ISIS electrifies the internet with beheadings, a world in which we are connected to every single person through love seems very 1990s.  That contradicts my dream of living beyond fear.

A friend helped me think through this, and I believe that some dreams "expire," sort of like milk or meat.  But when mine have expired, I have not been conscious about choosing to not have them as dreams any more.  I am not really sure how this happens in the Universe.  If I've prayed for a dream, especially some dreams for years, how do I say, "Uh, God, could we cancel that one?" but some clearly don't feel right any more.

I believe that we communicate with God in feelings.  Maybe I will just share with God what the feeling that I want will be and let God figure out how to get me to those feelings. Then, the picture of the dream can change without changing the feeling.  I think it is called "Letting God be God."  Novel concept, would you say? As I sit in my New Year's meditation, maybe that is the real dream, that I can surrender my dreams and allow myself to experience God's dreams for me...and for the world. Now that will be living my dreams.

Death of a Dream

During my vacation in September, I read The Pilgrimage, a novel by best-selling author Paulo Coehlo's.  It had a number of several exercises that I thought might be helpful in my upcoming retreat, which I dog-eared, as well as a some passages that I wanted to note.  (When I have finished with a book, it is well-marked with lots of pages turned down.)

The night before I started my retreat, I pulled it out and looked over some of the passages, and one which spanned several pages was about the death of a dream.  Now clearly I had not just read this passage but had read it carefully enough that I'd marked it for a return visit, but I really didn't remember it.  Yet as I read it on Thursday evening, I did so with great attention.  In the almost month since my retreat, I have continued to "chew" on the passages.

The passage is a conversation between a spiritual teacher/guide and his student on the Compostelo de Santiago pilgrimage in northern Spain.  The teacher is telling his student how/why our dreams die.  "The first symptom of the process of our killing our dreams," the teacher says, "is our lack of time." Those who have read this blog for awhile will know that this immediately grabbed my interest.  My dream of writing regularly, even for this blog, has seemed to be gobbled up by lack of time.*

As I reread this passage, I looked at it differently.  The teacher doesn't say the dream dies from lack of time.  He said that we kill our dreams because of our failure to make them priorities--to make time for them.  Suddenly, the lack of time for writing has moved from a passive thing that is out of my control to the deliberate and active action of killing my own dream.  I am keenly aware of the choices that I make at this busy time of the year.

"The second symptom of the death of our dreams lies in our certainties.  Because we don't want to see life as a grand adventure, we begin to think of ourselves as wise and fair and correct in asking so little of life...we never see the delight, the immense delight in the hearts of those engaged in battle.  For them, neither victory nor defeat is important; what's important is only that they are fighting the good fight."

Hmmm. Fighting for our dreams. Sir Winston Churchill once admonished: "Never give in. Never give in.  Never, never, never, never..."  I know that fighting the never-give-up fight for all of our dreams is not possible or even wise, which means that we have to choose the ones that we really fight for and which we allow to languish.  Yet, more often than not, I do not make conscious decision to let go of one dream so that I can consciously put more energy--more fight, if you will--into a more important dream.

"The third symptom of the passing of our dreams is peace..."** I am passionate about using my special talents and gifts.  Doing so may be seen as a "dream."  But I do have more than one gift.  I like to think writing is a gift.  So are dance, gardening, and cooking.  When I do any of those things, I do fall into what approximates a peaceful meditation.  I lose track of time.

When I write, I also lose track of time, but I also wrestle with angels as I struggle to find the truth of what I want to say.  When I was younger, I was much more certain what was true.  Now, not so much.  I am reminded best-selling writer and psychiatrist M. Scott Peck's work The Four Stages of Faith in which he described those who were most dogmatic as having a lower level of faith than those who have gone through a period of questioning and understand that faith is almost never black and white.  My writing dream may have succumbed to the more peaceful passions of dance, gardening and cooking. Questioning is work, often hard work.

What bothered me most as I first read, and continues to annoy me when I reread Coehlo's description of the death of a dream is what happens when we allow a dream to die.  "...Dead dreams begin to rot within us and to infect our entire being.  We become cruel to those around us..., and one day the dead, spoiled dreams make it difficult to breathe, and we actually seek death."***

I am not suicidal, nor do I expect to be.  However, I have from time to time begun to feel the rot of dead dreams within me...before slipping back into the peace of auto-piloting through life rather than fighting for them.  I don't believe I've been cruel, but I certainly do become irritable from time to time.  Some days I just don't like myself much, and I believe those to be the days when I feel the rot of abandoned dreams most strongly.

In five weeks I am supposed to leave the temporary assignment I've enjoyed so much and return to my regular job.  Over the last two weeks, I have occasionally felt physically ill thinking about going back, even though I am returning to an almost completely new leadership team.  My new boss is someone I've worked with from another location, and I liked working with him a lot.  There is some toxicity left among staff that I dread, but as I've pondered, in my heart of hearts I am certain that my nausea is about going back into a situation in which I fear that my dreams will once again succumb to the fast pace of day to day work that doesn't inspire me.  What The Upanishads call "The sleeping state that men call waking."

I will write more on another day about consciously choosing to let go of a dream, but, for today, my learning is to just keep my dreams conscious until I intentionally let go of them, rather than letting them rot and making me a person I don't like very much.



*Coehlo, The Pilgrimage, P. 57
**Coehlo, The Pilgrimage, P. 58
***Coehlo, The Pilgrimage, P. 59

Skip The What-ifs

On NPR's "All Things Considered" recently, I was literally stopped in my tracks by a story.  Was I hearing what I thought I heard?  Sure enough.  18-year-old Kayla Montgomery won the title for her distance in track and field in North Carolina, making her one of the country's fastest young distance runners. She is currently ranked 21st in the nation in the 3,200 meters and will soon compete nationally.*

While that accomplishment is commendable, her title and ranking are not what make her story extraordinary.  What makes her stand out is that she has accomplished them while having multiple sclerosis.  She cannot feel her legs much of the time, and her coach must meet her at the finish line to catch her, or else she will fall on the track and not be able to get up.

I personally cannot imagine how she does this, but she has the heart of a champion. She is obviously good at her sport, she loves it, and she wants to be the best.  What is even more remarkable about Kayla is her attitude.  In the NPR piece, she says, "For a few years, I was terrified that I might not be able to run tomorrow or the next day. I kind of decided that that wasn't really helping me and I wasn't happy living like that. So I stopped focusing on the what-ifs, and [started] focusing on what I'm able to do now."

Boy, am I ever humbled!  She's ranked 21st in the nation, she can't even feel her legs, and she won't let herself be stopped by what-ifs.  One of those what-ifs is falling on the track and not being able to get up.  That  happened to her recently.  Motivated by another competitor passing her, she grabbed a fence, pulled herself back to her feet, and continued the race.

Now, just what is it that I've been putting off doing because of what-ifs? Kayla's inspiration tells me that if she could pull herself back to her feet and finish the race, there really isn't anything I couldn't do, if I was willing to embarrass myself a little and figure things out when they happened. You see, if did fall on the track of my life a few years ago, but unlike Kayla, since I pulled myself to my feet, I've been limping along on someone else's dream rather than my own. 

I think of how many times I've been stalled because of concerns about things that might go wrong again, when really all that matters is that I get started on my life. Even taking a single step in the direction I want to go is better than being a stuck in someone else's life.  When I finish this column, I plan to sit down and make a list of things I would do if there were no what-ifs and then figure out something I can do to start them in the next two weeks.  The only way I can really fail is if I don't show up--for my life and my dreams.  I've been doing that too much in recent years.  Now, it is time for me to find the heart of the champion that I can be and get started.

*http://www.npr.org/2014/03/08/287751438/catching-kayla-running-one-step-ahead-of-multiple-sclerosis