DREAMER

I can’t get rid of the dream. No matter how I try to kill it, it won’t die. Instead it stays and taunts me, that it will never, ever come true.

This is not a direct quote but it echoes what I could have said and, you the reader, probably could also. I would be amazed to find an adult who didn’t have a dream such as this tucked away somewhere in the heart.

How I regard myself for nurturing this precious dream is what matters. Do I, as the poet said, try to wipe it out of my life? Or perhaps consider how that dream, even without coming true, has influenced me? For good? For evil? Or do I scoff at myself for being so dimwitted that I had such big ideas for myself, of myself? After all, who am I? Looking at it, remembering it like this can be a real putdown, a powerful blow to self-acceptance.

To accept myself means to accept what I think, feel what I feel, desire what I desire, have done what I have done and what is in this present moment. That dream, not yet fulfilled is a beautiful place in my soul – a place to rest, to recommit. It is where I can retreat when those “never, ever” thoughts bombard me and where, reorganizing my thoughts, my desires and my knowledge that the dream is good, I gain acceptance that “what will be, will be.” However the dream is real and is mine. I hold it close and only with my dying breath will I let it go.