When I was seven, I looked out the window and thought that I would like to go to the sky. Call it ambition or childish zeal—children’s dreams are anything but small; they build large spaceships with their hands and tell their stories to match, pretend to drive fast cars for fun. I was nothing special, but I was told I was, and maybe that’s where it all went wrong.
Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.
—Les Brown, though I simply knew it as the motivational poster that decorated every classroom I went in. A nice sentiment, I think, because when you are seven, they call you gifted—no, a prodigy—no, a star. They say you are a star, and they place a hot torch in your hand and say you were born with it, that you will shine. For whatever reason, they don’t stop to consider that maybe it’s a little too early to be giving this kid a god complex, but it couldn’t hurt to say something inspiring, could it?
Well, here’s a better saying: Every kid wants to be an astronaut; not every kid gets to be one.
Reality is not catchy. When I was seven, I dreamed of flying to space. When I was twelve, I wanted to be a traveling writer, and when I was fifteen, I just wanted to go somewhere else. I saw the truth for what it was: that we were made for leaving. Isn’t that what all this is for? All this running, this chasing of dreams.
Sometimes I wish a disaster would strike me. A plane to fall on my head, or my room to catch fire, or a car to swerve and take out my legs. My life has gone too smoothly for me to be feeling this lost, and I look at those who have struggled, forged their course into something strong and durable. I stand here and look at my own history, a thin sheet that barely covers the gaps between the years, and I envy.
What ever happened to my torch? I can list the names of the planets, but I can’t tell you what comets are made of. I can start stories, but I can never finish them. These dreams are spider webs around my fingers, old haunts I misremember out of obligation or love. We are just old, abandoned cars, built up and then left to break down.
I think at some point, the plot of my life stopped making sense. Every chapter I read becomes more confusing, more murky, as though I’m no longer in the same genre I began in. Dreams don’t change, but people do as they grow older, and maybe that’s what makes it so much harder to find the way. Like punching a destination into your GPS and finding it no longer exists—a road or office building where it once was.
When I graduated from high school, it was supposed to be the end of something. A character arc, or an epilogue. But I’m a month into my freshman year of college now, and I don’t think I ever left the first act.
On my fifth day on campus, my best friend tricked me into going on a hike with his dorm. They led us three miles up the side of a mountain in the dead of night, and I fell behind stopping to catch my breath. The air was cold against my overheated face, and the dark made it hard not to trip over rocks in the trail.
But the view. It was gorgeous. I was seven and seventeen, looking towards the horizon. A constellation of city lights shining there.
I’d left. I’d arrived. Perhaps I’ve outgrown my ambitions, and what I want is a lot more complicated than what I originally thought; perhaps my old dreams no longer fit me. I don’t have any new ones to replace them, and yet, moving forward is inevitable.
It would be nice if we could hold open the shutters to our past indefinitely, but if we are to be ships breaking out of bottles, that means leaving some things behind.
Maybe we really are stars. Or maybe we’re dust. The water cycle says we’ll evaporate into clouds—perhaps one day I’ll turn around to find myself looking back from the doorstep where I came.
It’s time.
Are you going now? Will you try running too?