Dreams.  Not the kind that stirs up altered memories in our sleep, but the kind that can keep us awake.   The ones that cause us to perhaps lose our thoughts and our focus at any given moment.  The ones that encourage us to move past the current state of things and into something grander.  Well, maybe not always encourage and sometimes it’s more a sense of general wonder – regardless of how you choose to interpret it, I’m thinking a lot today about the dreams I’ve had throughout my life, and the one that sits in front of my mind today as I enter my 45th year of experiences.

They’re not always big or elaborate, these dreams.  Sometimes a dream can be small, like wanting to try a certain food, catch up on a movie you’ve been hearing about, or try a new hiking trail.  Other times they can be more ambitious while not coming off as a ridiculous stretch to outsiders: “I want to get back into baseball”, or “I’d love to publish a children’s book”.  At times they can be about the path you’re thinking of choosing – “do I become a chef, or do I pursue a career in music?”

The point is, how you dream and what you dream about has no rule for scale.  It’s good, sometimes, to keep the bar at an easily achievable level.  It doesn’t make the goal any less rewarding when achieved, nor does it diminish the value it brings to the dreamer.  Dreams are deeply personal, and accepting that, I think, is why when I sometimes explain my dreams or ambitions to someone else and they react with apprehension, I am pretty ok with it.

I respect the opinions and experiences of others, and I will weigh those against my own ambitions, but the lived experiences of others do not define my own.  I can learn from both the successes and foibles of others while making the choice for myself how that dream will ultimately play out.  It’s part of the beauty of the human experience – we’re all here together, sharing, learning and growing, not in spite of one another, but as a result of sharing stories and sometimes having a different point of view.  Of course there is a healthy way to provide support and opinions, but I don’t think I’d like a world in which we all agreed on everything – it feels to me that a world like that would feel nothing more than ‘stuck’.

After college, when I wanted to travel to China on my own for a stint, I think it confused a lot of people.  Why would I want to be away from all the comforts of family, friends, and home and immerse myself in discomfort in such a foreign place?  Well, in part it was to challenge myself to grow.  In part it was because friends of mine had done something similar and their stories had me dreaming of what the rest of the world looked and felt like.  That dream kept growing and growing, and so I went after it.  Taking the TESL courses I needed, securing my documents and stepping out of my comfort zone and into a dream-like world of faraway adventures.

Some dreams, as I said, are bigger than others – they’ll take you to far away places, or keep you close to home where you take a leap towards creating something of your own – a catering business, a series of escape rooms, a chicken coop in your backyard, a weekly blog – with determination a dream can manifest into an experience to be proud of.  Make you happy.  Make you proud.

It can also scare the hell out of you.

When a dream reaches reality, that’s when things can go from all aglow to suddenly very heavy.  It’s one thing to have an idea that you can freely toy around with because the idea itself hasn’t cost you anything yet.  You can safely get lost in the grandiose visions of turning your idea into millions of dollars without investing or risking anything.  You don’t need to sell your house, move to another country, or quit your job to have a dream.  But as soon as you have that lease, that plane ticket, that contract, or whatever else that grounds your dreams in your hands….that’s when reality kicks in.

I’m pretty proud, I must say, that through all of the scared feelings, words of caution and tumultuous emotions I’ve felt over the years, I’ve always pushed to put my dreams ahead of my fears.  Can things go wrong?  Yep.  Could I get sick in a foreign country?  Yes.  Will the business not work out?  Maybe.  Will I trip and fall running the bases?  There’s a pretty good chance.  But to me none of that feels as bad as not trying at all.

All of this, of course, is relevant as I come face to face with another decision to make – to follow another dream, or just let it go.

I’ve talked a big game for two years about the next thing I want to do, and now that opportunity may be being presented to me exactly how I wanted it.  It’s the weight of reality setting in.

It comes with risk.  It comes with work.  It comes with complete uncertainty and fear.

It also comes with hope, joy and possibility.

All I have to do now, I guess, is decide…