What I'm Talking About When I'm Talking About Dreaming

When you're little you have big plans. They are plans which come with being young, having your whole life in front of you and more or less not knowing better. Since these are usually longshots that noone can or will tell you aren't likely to happen, they get grouped together as your dreams. While an actual dream may have you flying or speaking in front of your whole school while naked, these are things that under the right circumstances could possibly happen. Anyone who has ever achieved them has begun with the dream of one day doing them. In that regard, you've completed the first step.

Then life catches up with you. Things aren't as easy as they seem and that person who achieved the dream you're aspiring to... well, they're the one who did it. There were other people who also wanted to do the same thing, who dreamed the dream just like them, who never got there. You don't hear their stories because there's no way you could document them all. They are swept away by the rushing horde who follows the one person who did achieve their dream. When Eminem says "You can do anything you set your mind, man," at the end of Lose Yourself, he's speaking from his own experience. He just omits that he was a remarkably talented and experienced individual who benefited from being in the right place to have the opportunity to do what he'd set his mind to doing.

I was young once with my whole life in front of me and the benefit of more or less not knowing better. During that time I had two dreams. One was to be an actor. The other was to be President of The United States. I wanted to be each of them because then I'd get to do something I was interested in all of the time. I'd be recognized being that person and that would come to define me to the world. All I wanted was the recognition and to know that people liked me. As I got older, those dreams began to melt and to become more reasonable. By the time I was 21, I wanted to be a film director or just an important local politician. There are way more people who can do those jobs. Then my dreams continued their slide. By the time I was 26, I wanted to be a writer or just someone who was a political insider. Even if I couldn't head the process, I could still be a part of it. Five years, a breakup and an economic crash later, I don't even believe in those dreams anymore. I've found my level and it is what has always been: interested observer. Nothing has changed except for the future as I imagined it. It never arrived.

What I've learned as I've gotten older is your dreams change. What you want out of life becomes less of a destination than a place, a continuous feeling over a one-time accomplishment. It's less about becoming something different and more about fully becoming yourself. Your personal identity is developed so you're less worried about something outside of yourself defining you. In fact, I'm more worried about something negatively defining me than I try to latch onto something positive. If I were more religious that might be different. As it is, I aim to represent the inner me to as many people as possible who want to know it.

Now, as I'm older and less and less naive, I have different dreams. They're things I started a long time ago and thought I would come back to if and when I ever got a chance. They were what I would do once I'd achieved my dreams and then could do whatever I wanted. The irony is I wanted the freedom which would come with success and have been provided that same freedom by abject failure. It's very much the same as the monetary freedom I enjoy because I didn't push myself academically and thus didn't incur astronomical amounts of debt by going to graduate school. P = q but not p can = q too.

My dream now is to have a room. It will have to be a place where I can complete my project and be able to leave it. One of the constants in my life since I was 16 is not living in the same place for very long. Part of that is my choice and it is in response to the part of it which is not. I'd like to be able to not need to tear it down. This room will be mine and it will reflect the inner me. To that extent I've been saving pictures and articles from magazines since I was 19 years old. I keep them in a tan plastic filebox which I dutifully slug from old apartment to new apartment waiting for the day they can all come out to stay. In it are basketball and baseball players I thought were cool, bands which I wanted to memorialize and even a few pictures I tore out because it made sense. They are just things I was interested in or thought looked cool. I'd like to have a place where I can put these mementos on the wall and just sit amongst them. I enjoy high-backed chairs and I will have one in my room. Whenever I'm feeling not like myself or want to reminisce that room will be my refuge. I won't keep snacks or work or even anything I'd use on a regular basis in there. And when I'm not using it, I will keep the door closed.

You can visit it if you'd like. But please be respectful of your surroundings. Take note this is what my dream became. My dream is to have a place which reminds me of the time when I still held onto my dreams. Others may lament the lose of their dreams or continue holding onto them under longer and longer odds. My dreams fulfilled their destiny to become nothing and I feel better for recognizing it. If they say it is better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all, then I say the same is true of dreaming. And like love, I will not dream like I did as a young man. The loss of my dreams will not embitter me or cause me to close my heart to them. It will be a mature dream I seek, a better and more realistic dream for me to follow. One which is based on me who I am instead of the me I'd once hoped I'd become.