Observation: a lot of people who talk about “living your dream”
aren’t really doing so themselves.
–Chris Guillebeau
I suppose this is a shot at self-styled lifestyle gurus who aren’t practicing what they’re preaching. But as easily as we bandy around the idea of “living your dream,” it isn’t always so straightforward, is it?
Sometimes it is straightforward. Sometimes it is just a case of doing some basic research, of putting together a budget in order to save toward a do-able goal, of deciding to take the risk and go for it.
But other times it isn’t quite so simple.
Do I live my dream? Kind of.
But parts of my dreams have been put on hold. I’ve let parts of them go. Some of them I haven’t yet discovered. And some of them are in the middle of being baked, and I’m not sure how they’re going to turn out.
Part of the inspirational speak is tell people how easy it actually is to live your dream. And then we will all feel all fired up and ready to tackle anything. But that’s simply not true. Sometimes it’s simpler than we think, and sometimes it isn’t. Sometimes it’s quite difficult. And sometimes we achieve our dreams only to realize we’ve been chasing the wind, and the dream we thought we wanted isn’t actually our dream anymore.
Have you ever had that happen? It’s a real eye-opener.
Perhaps living our dreams is more of a state of mind, an acknowledgment of life’s possibilities. In accepting life’s disconcerting lack of permanence, we can see how that very lack can simultaneously be one of the best and the worst parts of being human. The worst because we have things (experiences, relationships, our own physical bodies) that we don’t want to let go of. The best because now is going to change, so even if our dreams feel far away in that now, soon it will be another now, maybe one in which those same dreams feel closer.
Or perhaps living our dreams is about living an examined life instead of a blind one. Do many dreams exist without a give and take? What are we willing to sacrifice and when do we find compromise impossible? What do we give up in pursuit of our dreams?
Or perhaps, just perhaps, living our dreams is something each one of us has to define for ourselves.
May you live the dreams you wish to live, when you wish to live them. It probably won’t be easy, but it might very well be worth it.
Or, as Theodora Goss says, “When things are difficult? That’s when you know you’re having an adventure.”
The Practical Free Spirit 