Dreams

I've had to learn that trying to become who I want to be I have to be willing to try in the face of uncertainty... the uncertainty of success. Fear can slow anyone down in this desire to achieve dreams.

To quote an Eagles song, “So often times it happens that we live our lives in chains
And we never even know we have the key.” Sometimes it’s not others that keep us down and away from accomplishing our fantasies.

I dated a girl once that choose to become a nurse because she had taken some health classes in high school. And from what I understood was that she didn’t even like it that much. She secretly had the desire to be an archeologist, but she had been dissuaded because of the danger in foreign countries in which she wished to work and that she didn’t want to “waste” the time that she had already put into learning and studying in her advanced health classes. But what was she really losing?

So many dreams, opportunities, and desires have passed me by for so long because I couldn’t afford it or I couldn’t make time for it. But now I truly believe that I am struggling to achieve things that I never had before. I’m saving money, currently, to go sing with the college concert choir in Italy. Can you believe it? Italy! The farthest I’ve been out of the country is Mexico and the farthest East I’ve ever been was Pennsylvania, but I was on a truck route with my father so I never counted that. But the fact of the matter is that I’m striving to achieve something that I want.

I almost started studying to be an engineer (electrical, mechanical, or civil I was never sure) which I would have hated even if I was good at it. My reasoning at the time was that I could make money to support a family and then some. Dreams now consist of becoming a teacher and touching people’s lives by the instruction and care that I could give them. And maybe having my own business when I retire as a hobby or maybe even before that to support my teaching hobby. :)

Either way, I will not settle for something that is “good enough”. I think that this desire was instilled in me by my father, not necessarily about career but at the time it was about finding a wife. My parents are divorced and I remember how my dad explained his theory. My father fought for my mother’s love, but she settled on him instead of fighting in return. I don’t want my future wife to settle for me and I don’t want to settle for her. I don’t want us to settle for the way that we live, how we raise kids, what we do on vacations, what we do for a living, or what we do to be happy. I don’t want us to simply get by, but I want us to struggle to achieve a dream. Because having my own home and family is a dream of mine.

Somehow I have gained hope. Pain still permeates my soul from the experience of trying to make a relationship work with someone. The most difficult thing that I learned was that physicality is nothing to build a relationship on. What will you do when the desire for sex and similar contact have all but gone? I may be a silly romantic, but I would like to find somebody that I can picture myself growing old with. I want to be one of those cute old couple that people look at and say, “how cute” or “they are still in love.” Such thing is also a dream of mine.

My romanticism always seems to draw itself out especially when I free write or journal write. It’s always been a part of me. I remember my older sister saying to me, “you’ve been a romantic as long as I have known you.” This, of course, made me laugh, mostly because it’s true. When I was little in the age of deciding between being a cowboy, a cop, or a firefighter I remember saying that I wanted to go on a mission for my church, go to college, and get married. Little did I know, there are so many things involved in achieving these things especially since now I know what I want to do in college.

Even though I feel so good about what I’m doing and what I’m working to achieve, I still feel alone despite the support from family and friends. It might be the fact that I feel that there are some things that I have to do on my own to make things work. Sure friends can help or encourage but I still have to take the initiative. But still that doesn’t feel quite right. As much as I’d hate to admit it, I want somebody by my side to support me in my dreams and I hers. I want somebody that I can share my dreams with and she’ll want to share hers with me. And it won’t be like we’ll just keep them in a drawer to look at every once in a while, but we will work to achieve them. Some things can be on a small scale like creating the house that we want to have even if we have to build it or remodel it one room at a time.

There is some satisfaction in saying that “this is mine” or “I did this,” like owning a house or a car. But monetary things don’t really matter so much to me as the experiences I will have and the very special one that I will share it with.