Thursday, March 28, 2013

Dreaming



I had planned on including the popular "When I grow up" song, by the Pussycat dolls. But really, I think this one captures me a little bit better than that one. Either way, if you connect more with the other, I'll include a link at the bottom. 

Not the point though.

When we're young, we're all dreamers. Even the realists in the group are forever dreaming. Dreaming of who they'll be, what they'll do, where they'll live, how many kids they'll have. Then there are all of us dreamers that dream of all those things and then some. Like how many dogs we'll have, how we'll have a magic farm full of happy and well-fed animals that will never die, how we'll build a gingerbread castle out of all the candy in the world and let kids have candy for free but adults have to pay a bajillion dollars for a single piece. 

It's those dreams that held us together, connected us to each other. 

When we're young, we dream even in our daily activities. You weren't picking up the leaves in the yard, you were harvesting life-saving food-stuffs from dangerous enemy lands. You weren't cutting the grass, you were slowing the growth of the deadly Medusa-turf. You weren't going to school, you were meeting up with your fellow warriors to brave the most dangerous lands of all time. Or, if you were like me and you enjoyed school, you were running off to the magical place where you'd have free access to all the world's knowledge and when you were done you'd take over the world... And build those gingerbread castles.

And through all that, we always had a hundred friends with us, dreaming and scheming the very same things. Yet as adults, we find we have fewer friends and more distance between finding new ones. We talk about each other when we aren't around, we secretly wish for something or someone to sabotage something great in each other's lives so we can get a leg up on the "competition", we root around each other's private life when we don't mean well just to feel better about ourselves. 

What happened?

What happened to sharing our suckers and taffy, even when the adults told us it was a bad idea? What happened to helping a friend get up after a nasty fall, and wiping the dirt off their bloody knees? What happened to getting off our own swing of pleasure to give a little nudge to the friend next to us so they could go higher, faster? 

We didn't look at our 5 year old friend and say, "Get your own candy, this one is mine."
We didn't look at our 5 year old friend and say, "Too bad you fell, now you're gonna lose!"
We didn't look at our 5 year old friend and say, "Push yourself, I'm swinging!"

We didn't care that it would take away a few millimeters of lollipop, a few drops of blood, a few seconds of our time. It was our friend, and that's what friends did. 

What happened?

We stopped dreaming. We stopped feeling, and believing; And we started thinking. And what happened when we started thinking? We started OVER thinking. Rationalizing all the things we couldn't do. We couldn't fly, because we didn't have wings. We couldn't swim, because we would drown. And when we stopped enjoying every moment of every day, we started over-celebrating the "milestones".

I'm 16, my next milestone isn't until I'm 18.
I'm 18, my next milestone isn't until I'm 21.
I'm 21, my next milestone isn't until I'm 30. 

If you put so much faith into such far-between moments in time, you lose what you wanted to look forward to in the first place.

What happened?

I have two theories, really. 

In the first scenario:
Because you focus on such far-between moments in time, you lose track of what matters. Of the here, the now, the who you have around you. You become so absorbed in yourself, and what you can't do; That you lose focus of who you ARE, who you HAVE, what you CAN do. And most importantly, what you can DREAM. 

In the second scenario: 
Einstein was right. The larger the mass of an object, the greater an effect on Space-Time it has. The older we get, the bigger we grow, the more we affect the fabric of Space-Time around us. In essence, the faster time "flies" so to speak. 

Either way, you can ask almost any adult and the older they got the faster time seemed to move. Was it because of natural Space-Time? Or, more likely, was it because they failed to stop and smell the roses? It's up to you what you believe. And whether or not you try to change the reaction in your own life. For better or worse.

I may not know what I want to be "When I grow up", because it's changed so much so many times as I've grown to better understand myself. But I do manage to keep up with the single most important step in figuring it out.
I keep dreaming.