I believe we all go through life with certain longings firmly attached to our hearts and psyches.  Whatever their source, they have the potential to give us a profound sense of a life fulfilled if we are able to turn these longings into reality.  On the other side, there lies a feeling of deep loss – an empty well that feels especially barren because our desire to see it run over has been with us for so long.  It can come in many forms – everything from an athlete who trains for years hoping to win an Olympic medal only to place fourth, to a writer with multiple manuscripts, a pile of rejection letters and bills to pay.  Some are grand, many are quite simple, but if these dreams managed to lodge themselves in our cells at an early age and made a nice cozy home there, the yearning to see these visions come to life can be particularly visceral.  And if they begin to take shape before us but suddenly fall apart, the disappointment can be devastating.

I feel I am walking along the edge of seeing one of my deepest dreams become real, where one slight slip or stumble might send it all careening down a cliff never to be recovered.  I have been struggling with this over the last few days for various reasons, and trying to observe how this makes me feel and whether or not there is a way to re-imagine or re-configure what I want so as to avoid becoming too attached to what is probably an overly idealistic vision.  It is not work-related, but of a much more personal nature, and while I don’t want to come across as vague or secretive, I don’t think the details are necessary to work through this in this journal.  I think the deeper questions and issues at hand here are relevant on many different levels, to a lot of different people, for a wild variety of different reasons.

At what point do we let go of a dream we have held onto so dearly for so long and accept that it is not meant to be?  How far are we to twist and bend what we want to accomodate the circumstances of our lives and the choices we have made?  When does it become futile to continue trying to create exactly what we want?

I am not writing this out of despair.  I am writing more out of curiosity, and my usual propensity to think about things too much; I am trying to get clear on some thoughts and questions and get them out of my brain.  If I let them stew inside of me too much, it could go to a place of real sadness.  My goal in writing about this is to continue to shift my perspective on what this dream of mine is about and whether or not I might have made it real, just not in the way I originally imagined.  Maybe all I need to do is change my definition a little, add some new colors and erase a line or two.

I am learning that no matter what kind of relationships I may have dreamed of for myself – whether with friends, family, spouse, siblings, email buddies, colleagues, etc. – I have no reason to expect any of them to go beyond their comfort level, issues, baggage, desires, dreams or fears for me.  I am learning that when I begin to place these expectations on people, I am quite often disappointed.  Even if I am willing to reach farther than is comfortable for me for someone, I still need not trouble myself with thoughts of wanting them to reciprocate.  I say this not out of bitterness, but with an open heart.  I believe I have done myself a disservice in wanting to always be able to count on certain people in a certain way, and wanting to trust that we will always try our hardest with each other.  The truth is that every single human being I come into contact with on any level is coming to the table with his or her own stuff.   The more each of us has in our big bag of memories and longings, the more complicated things can become, and sometimes a moment arises where one person is unable to try anymore and they believe all the good must be tossed aside in order to avoid dealing with anything they deem to be bad.  At times we choose to honor the joy, and other times we choose to honor the pain.  I am learning – by being on the receiving end of both of these circumstances – that I do not serve myself or anyone around me by honoring any kind of pain.  I am learning that it is important to try as hard as I can to focus on the goodness in any relationship I’m in, and honor that above all else.  The difficulty is that if someone else – no matter how hard I might have tried to be a good person for them or how much I may want to be close to them – chooses to sever the connection between us, I may simply have to accept that they chose otherwise and let them go with love.  Or, if not let them go completely, at least allow some space to exist between us to see how things play out.  This is the challenge.  This is my work.

There is something I have always wanted in my life, and I think I have been walking around believing I don’t have it because I have placed too many restrictions on its definition.  There are certain words that are so heavy with meaning because of history, society, our childhood memories, the media, and our own deep longings.  Words such as love, home, family, friendship, life, commitment, happiness, beauty, God.  What do these words really mean?  Is it possible for us to create a universal definition of any of them?  Today I read the definition of love as "an intense feeling of deep affection."  What about "a feeling that your heart is going to blossom with a giant mountain full of sparkly joy" or "a feeling that there is no one else on the entire planet that feels the joy I feel because of this other most magnificent person in the whole universe sitting next to me"?  Do I serve myself better by creating my own definition of what I consider to be the most important elements of my life or by trying to squeeze what I want into a box created by someone else?

Life is a tricky thing.  I sometimes envision it as a wide open field of flowers, and other times see it as the dark forest in "Princess Bride", with Rodents of Unusual Size, flames that erupt out of nowhere, and deadly pits of quicksand.   One day there is a wonderful stillness, the next day all hell breaks loose.  With ourselves, our work, and the people we love.  I feel very fortunate to have gotten this far in life with so many beautiful memories to carry with me.  I feel blessed beyond belief, knowing the dream that has been with me ever since I was a child has, in fact, come true, even though I understand now that I need to tweak my original definition.  I know I will still have many moments in the future when I go back to that first "perfect" definition and feel sad that I could not create that in my own life, but I suppose that is to be expected since this has been with me for so long.  When that happens, hopefully I’ll remember to let it go gently, and watch it float away in a cloudless blue sky, remembering that I’m wrong, and that the dream is real.