Do We Dream Big Enough?

Or within reason?

Growing up, my dad was a dreamer: my mom a realist. He had fun. She worried. Most of the time things worked out remarkably well. Occasionally they were an epic catastrophe.

It was a financial and emotional roller coaster.

My dad, by his own account, achieved success that should have been impossible. My mom, on the other hand, felt frustrated and stymied by her lack of outer success given her passion, hard work and talent.

She dreamed big.

She was an interior designer, landscape designer, clothing designer and culinary creator. She was a more sophisticated, more authentic, less compromising, European-inspired Martha Stewart.

She had no time for the bland platitudes of Pottery Barn.

She was relentless.

She re-imagined, re-strategized and re-engineered her dream. She even changed dreams several times to be more culturally relevant, consumer friendly, marketing-savvy, business-minded– whatever “those making it” told her would help.

But, none of it worked. She felt frustrated, disappointed and defeated unless…

She was engaged in simply doing the art she loved.

What if the doing IS the dream.

Don’t get me wrong. Results are nice. Really nice.

But maybe in our quest to “measure up” we have short-changed ourselves on the broader parameters of what constitutes a dream.

Dictionary definitions range:

To have a deep aspiration or hope. To imagine as possible. To indicate that a statement or suggestion is improbable or unrealistic. To invent; concoct. A condition or achievement that is longed for. A wild fancy or unrealistic hope.

All of these position a dream as something out there.

The dream, it seems, must always be two steps ahead of reality.

I dreamt of writing lyrics and singing on an album. I did. I dreamt of playing out. I did. I dreamt of the album selling more. It didn’t. I dreamt of writing a book. I did. I dreamt of doing it again and again. I did. I dreamt of it taking off. It didn’t.

Can dreams only stay dreams if they don’t come true?

Can we only dream about what we do not have? Is what we have no longer dreamy enough? If what we attain remains our dream have we lowered our aspirational standards?

We are so conditioned to believe that the dream must look a certain way, be accountable by certain measures, that we live in pursuit of some external gold standard.

Do we have the right dream?

Leo recently told me that one of his friends said one of his other friends wasn’t popular anymore. He asked me if I thought this was true.

I told him it was horseshit.

Popularity has nothing to do with the person in question. It’s all about the shifting winds of trending opinion. And the weather can change on a dime.

That boy who is curating the “who who’s of fifth grade popularity” could wind up a has-been by midyear.

The only thing you can count on is personal integrity.

Of spirit. Of character. Of heart.

It’s what you stand for as a human being that gives you a stake in the ground. That speaks to who you are as a person.

What other people think about that will rise and fall.

Sometimes it’s scarier when you’re on top because there’s so far to fall. But if you know the top is an illusion and the bottom too… if you stay grounded in what truly matters to you, you cannot fail.

I think dreams are the same.

Even unconsciously, we are pulled into the cultural dream of our time.

The popular dream– be it the best private school education, most charitable contribution, most exotic vacation, highest paying job, most elite award, skinniest body…

The list is limited only by marketing mania and our belief that more will make us happier, smarter, more well-balanced, prepared, connected.

Our dreams are loaded with intensity, but have lost their integrity?

It occurs to me lately that we have to loosen our grip on what we think we want, on what we are straining and striving and stretching for, in order to consider something much bigger.

The parameters are too small.

They are limited to the size of things, thoughts and the theatrics of fear.

What if the dream was something attainable? Something, even, that we already have?

For those of us lucky enough to be surrounded by love and connection, honking geese, a hot shower and fresh-cut hydrangea, maybe the bigger dream is to see what we have.

My mom did, in the last couple years.

My dream, amongst all the others, is not to lose sight of this one.

And with any luck, maybe living in this dream shapes all the future adventures on my dreaming horizons.