Deeper thoughts

Dreaming when you can.

For this article, I’ll be describing a little of what dreaming means to me, particularly at this point in my life. This will really just be a spill of my thoughts – hopefully it’s not too boring. 

As kids, don’t most of us want to save the world? We’re told the world is in our hands – we have all the power, and we can use it to make this place better. Our aspirations and hopes grow bigger and taller, so big that they’re larger than ourselves, and we like it that way. When I grow up, I’ll change things. We say this and our parents want to believe us – they really do –  but I doubt it’s so. They were the kids once, who wanted to craft a reality far different than the one they live, and now their hope can only be placed in the hands of the smaller, less experienced, more hopeful people around them, that share so much resemblance to themselves that it’s magical and  painful all at the same time. They watch us grow like wild flowers – free and determined – only to see that the wind is hitting us pretty sternly, and the sun beats down a little too much during certain seasons. We grow and we show our colors, and soon find that some people don’t like the talk of blue, or the combination of all the rainbow’s colors in one, small, young flower. Our parents – they pull us close, terrified that we too will lose our spirit, and a beautiful petal in which they prayed,  will soon hit the ground. As we grow, we see things we never thought we would, and hear things so terrible our hearts can’t bear it. Some of us even experience first hand the horrifically cold hand of this world. Maybe it wrapped around you. I pray it never plucked. I think somewhere along the line, we all begin to examine ourselves a little more closely. Was who I was as a child only possible because I was a child, or has part of me been hurt, beaten, trimmed? Was I naive, or am I going blind? The answer isn’t clear, and it’s not singular. It depends on who you ask, and how much spirit you have left to either believe or discard the answers you receive. Some will tell you to grow up and become realistic, while others preach to hold on, stay awake, aware, and willing. You may even get both of these responses from your parents, all out of love, fed by fear and desperation. The fact of the matter is: the world needs to be saved, probably more so than it did when we were young. It’s only that we’ve become overwhelmed, tired, and afraid. We don’t think we’re capable. How can we save the world when there is so much wrong with it? The darkness, if focused on, would consume me – I need to live my one and only life happily, which means safe and as far away from the chaos as possible. I can’t save something when it’s actively fighting back in so many lethal ways. I could house a child in foster care and find they’ve been abused by other families, but I’m lawfully unable to adopt them or protect them any further. My heart would rightfully break, and my life would become dedicated to saving a child I cannot save. I could work to help endangered animals, just to find pollution rates increasing alongside poacher activity. The life of a hopeful, naive, wild, or courageous person, spent going nowhere but in a circle. That’s not the life dreamed of in your bed as a child, but it is the one your parents feared when they told you to get your head out of the clouds. Where do we go from here? 

Unfortunately, that’s all I have time to write. At least it’s a good place to stop, as it’s with a question I’ve asked myself many times. Thank you for reading! 

Happy Halloween :)