Dreams

For a long time my dreams have been lofty – they’ve been in the clouds, untethered from the ground and from reality. I cherished these dreams, naming them the things that would carry on my legacy in the world. For a time my dream was to be like Katie Davis, an 18 year old who had left her home to live in Uganda and adopt a bunch of little girls. Then the dream was to teach English in foreign countries; then to start a fair trade business. I have dreamed of writing books, then editing books, then writing and performing songs. For a long time, the dream was to plant a church in Paris. Now, the dream centers around transitional housing for refugees and immigrants. These are all nice things, and I hope to actually do the last thing. I have always been vision-oriented and a bit of a daydreamer, and I have always struggled to weave those visions into my actual life. Everything was too high up, too detached from my real life to feel possible.

I think mostly what I dreamed of was being an impressive person – a person who does amazing things in the world and has a story to tell. I didn’t really know this was my dream until I actually tried to do impressive things and realized I had no power to do much of anything at all. It turned out that my dreams were standing guard of something deeper, something more consequential that God was doing that I had no intent of letting him do. I’ve always loved the Goo Goo Dolls song “Sympathy,” and there’s a specific line that gets me: “I wasn’t all the things I tried to make believe I was, and I wouldn’t be the one to kneel before the dreams I wanted. And all the talk, and all the lies, were all the empty things disguised as me.” It sounds dark and brooding, but I think we all have this truth within us: an ideal picture of who we want to be but aren’t.

I am now at a point in my life where I want my dreams to be firmly rooted in the earth. I want them to be real, and gritty, and hopeful, and honest. I still want big things – I don’t know if that side of me will ever change. But more than that, I want my dreams to boil down to something that can’t be taken away from me. A housing complex for refugees may never get off the ground, let alone stay afloat for decades. The global economy may collapse, or we could have another pandemic, and my dreams of travel would evaporate. Putting full hope in the institution of marriage or family doesn’t seem wise, either – no matter what, the exterior facades of our life will fade; the structures we set up to support ourselves may not always last. What does last are the choices we make, and how we live our lives. 

I have realized, then, that my dream is to be the kind of person that others want to be around. I want to radiate love. I want to move in kindness. I want to be gentle and patient and I want to listen and remember people’s names and ask how their kids are doing. I want to stop and give the man standing at the intersection a bottle of water. I want to invite people into my home and my heart, and I want to slow down. I want to stay low to the ground. I used to want dreams that felt as big as castles, but I don’t know if I want that anymore. I don’t think it’s wise, even, to believe we have the power to make sweeping changes in the world: diminishing poverty, emptying refugee camps, starting a movement. Those things might happen, but if they do they will be the result of many people, an army of individuals moving as a whole. I remember reading somewhere that we are past the days of heroes – we are now in need of movements of people working to do small things together, which add up to big things over time. 

I suppose what I’m saying is that I used to think dreams were all glitter and rainbows and sweetness. I still find joy in that idea, but I am finding now that dreams are full of earth and smallness, planted over time, waiting to form into things we may never see. Dreams are more like those whirly maple seeds that fall like helicopters from the sky in the fall. They seem light, and airy, and gentle. But then you plant them, and slowly, over decades, they become a tree. Eventually, after much time and care has gone into the growth of the tree, you can tap it for sap, watching it slowly pouring out of the tree you have cared for for so long. After all this, you can boil that sap; you can create maple syrup, fresh with the taste of fall. Real dreams are like this. You can buy Mrs. Butterworth’s at your supermarket, but that’s not what we’re talking about, here. We’re not talking about store bought dreams. We’re talking about time, and slowness, and roots, and dirt. We’re talking about patience. We’re talking about the joy that comes from making something that took the gentleness of decades. We’re talking about love. I am choosing, now, to chase real dreams – slow dreams; the dreams that last for generations.