When Dreams Go on the Back Shelf...

in #life5 years ago (edited)

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The other night I had a dream. It was one of the most beautiful dreams I've ever had.

In the dream there was a big house with lots of rooms in it.

I lived there with some other people, not joined by blood or marriage, but a family by choice.

Some of them were people I know, but one I met in the dream for the first time.

It was a girl, a teenager. She was lanky, half-black, beautiful.

She was my foster daughter, and she had just come to live with us that day.

I still remember details of her face and her hair, the dream was so clear.

We seemed happy living there together. Outside there was a garden with a stone fence around it. In the back yard there was a pond/pool with ducks swimming on it, carrying their ducklings on their backs.

At some point I realized I wasn't asleep anymore, and was just lying awake thinking about the dream.

I lay there for one and a half hours, until I had to get up, just thinking about it.

Because this is my dream, to have a home, filled with people I love.

A place where we can live and work together, because it's ours, not rented and shared with random strangers.

A place where we can live close to nature and where animals will run in and out between our feet.

A place where I can make my art, and everyone else can do whatever it is they like to do, where we'll cook good meals and eat them together, and sit under the stars in summer while children chase the frogs and fireflies.

The sheets will smell sweet because they dried in the sun, and there will be bowls cherries and apples on the wooden tables--and everyone can take as much as they want because there will be so many more on the trees when those are finished.

There will be a fireplace for winter, and we'll sit together watching movies in the evenings, not alone like we do now. Oh look, there's a Christmas tree standing in the corner...

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And sometimes when I come home from work to my dismal little room, the dream seems so far away. Not the dream itself, because I think about it all the time, but the making it a reality.

And no matter how much I calculate and plan to make it happen, I always come to the same conclusion:

I can't. We can't--the people who'd want to share this dream with me.

We don't have money. We have other responsibilities. It's just impossible right now.

And so the dream goes on the back shelf, and I put my shoulder to the wheel, one foot in front of the other, grateful to be able to survive, but always with that nagging, itching feeling that I'm not doing what I really want to be doing, what I'm really good at, what I've worked so hard for.

And that I'm not sharing my life with anyone, really. That there's no one I'm really close to here, who knows me truly and loves that thing that is me, who I know truly and love the person that is them. That the friendships in my life are mere ghosts and shadows, because of distance or shyness or incongruity.

And then I'm reminded of another time in my life when I had to put a dream on the back shelf.

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I was living in Cincinnati, working unseemly hours at an Indian restaurant, using a car that guzzled gas, and my money seemed to go as quickly as I earned it.

It was during that time that my friend Katie called me up from Minnesota and told me about a place called The New York Film Academy.

That was the first time in my life I had ever heard of the concept of film school, that there were places you could go to learn how to make movies, something I had always wanted to do.

I looked it up online, checked the prices of their workshops, tried to calculate how much it would cost to live in New York for two months, or to stay in New Jersey and take the train in every day...

And I realized that I just couldn't do it. It would cost $5,000 at least, and that seemed like an impossible amount of money to get my hands on when I was barely scraping by.

So I sadly resigned myself to putting the dream on the back shelf.

And I plugged away, waiting tables and hounding my boss to pay me what he owed.

But just one year later, I found a job on the tiny island of Malta in the Mediterranean, packed my bags and moved to Europe.

That had never been a dream of mine and was in some ways a complete surprise to me.

It was there, of all places, that I found a little (and much, much more affordable) film school and launched into my filmmaking journey.

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So unexpected, so unplanned, but just the right thing at just the right time.

(And guess what? Katie moved to Europe too and ended up going to that same film school.)

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And so sometimes I think, maybe my dream isn't so far away after all. Maybe it will happen in a way I'm not expecting, something that I never could have imagined or planned for, no matter how much I think about it and want it and wish for it. No matter how impossible it seems.

And that gives me hope.

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That’s beautiful how dreams can take us out of our element and remind of us what’s possible. They drive us into uncertainty, to contend for something better. I think external realities are the product of internal realities. I think that the environment around you has to submit to the dream within you. That’s why it’s so important nurture the beauty in your soul until what’s around you takes the shape of what you have within you. Dreams have an unconscious way of fulfilling themselves when that dream becomes a part of your identity and who you are. Dreams are first an inside job. But dreams stay dreams without risk. First you have to believe it’s possible, and then you have to live like it’s inevitable. Thank you for taking a risk. It encourages me to do the same.

Thanks for reading and commenting. :) Ironically, I think that letting go of a dream sometimes opens the door for it to come true. Not sure how that works, but it does seem to!

Hello @stephie.spicer, thank you for sharing this creative work! We just stopped by to say that you've been upvoted by the @creativecrypto magazine. The Creative Crypto is all about art on the blockchain and learning from creatives like you. Looking forward to crossing paths again soon. Steem on!

Thank you so much! I really appreciate it!

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