You opened your eyes… and realized it was all a dream.
Lately, I’ve been wondering if I should dare to dream at all. Maybe thinking about it too much means I’m getting ahead of myself.
I’ve never liked the phrase “pride comes before a fall”, a saying I found unsettling on first mention. It makes dreaming feel like a mistake, like wanting something too much or being too certain can make you lose it.
But avoiding thinking about them at all, is just floating through time, with no real idea of what you’re going to do. I don’t want to be stuck in a daydream. I want it to be my reality. But deliberatingly not thinking about something I want makes it feel like I don’t care, even when I do.
Another saying that runs through my head a lot is “shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars,” by Norman Vincent Peale. This one is more hopeful than the one above. But it touches on the danger of getting your second best dream, something close but not what you wanted. It makes you think that aiming for 120 percent would get you a 100. But not everything goes into infinity like numbers. Something close to what you wanted can still feel like disappointment (you know what they say about what the heart wants).
The question is, do I dare to dream, knowing all this?
Having a dream is not a “wishing game”. Usually, you wish for something after its chances are already over. That’s usually regret, wishing things turned out differently, a dream that really can’t come true at that point. No amount of “If” would be able to change it. That’s regret. I don’t want my “dreaming” to affect my perspective on outcomes like that. I don’t want my reality to ruin my dreams or vice versa.
If your plans don’t go the way you planned you tend to hide them, forget and ignore them. This means tossing your dreams into the back of your mind.
By dreaming, am I holding onto a wish, or something closer to true hope?
Thinking about it doesn’t make it happen. Nor does ignoring it. And that’s frustrating.
Wishing looks backwards tied to things we can’t change. It’s passive and wistful. Hope is more urgent. Dreaming is different. It looks forward for once, at its own pace and imagination. And if you don’t dream at all you might never know what you truly wanted, or whether you would actually enjoy that.
Dreaming alone doesn’t actually do anything. It’s what comes after the doubt, hesitation, risk and persistence. Dreaming is just the first step of a million others. Dreams don’t have to be just dreams, no matter how big or impossible.
I’d rather risk dreaming than not dream at all.
