Dear Diary,
The whole notion of dreaming has become so overused that we no longer like to talk about having dreams anymore. It is seen as trite. It has become a word that for mmany of us has lost its meaning. We think of iit as starry eyed pie in the sky kind of stuff. Think about it though, what would happen if we lost not only the word but the essense of it. What would happen if we lost the ability to think up ideas , big or small, and carry them out. How do our lives feel when we loose that enthereal quality. We have all felt it at one time or another, a mild depression, a bad week, a bout of illness, or greif. It is often in those periods that we are not dreaming. We cannot.
The rest of our lives, the times when everything is going on okay, is the time for dreaming, and it is important that we keep the meaning in the word for ourselves and for all of our lives. Dreaming is what I do on my walks, as I hook, as I create, and as I make my business and my life. I try to imagine all the possibilities that are open to me. I make up ideas. I build on other peoples ideas. I sometime emulate others, putting my own twist on it. Ideas are alll around us, and they are there so we can play with them, so we can dream.
One of the things I say quietly to myself is, “Dream Big, Baby.” The other little chant I have is ” Act Small”. Sometimes dreams are so unweildly you can only act small upon them, but several small actions, day after day, lead to bigger results. It is a proven theory, you know it is. You have likely proven it yourself time and time again.
Every now and then you need to need to grab a friend, a fellow dreamer, and sit together. Last week, my friend said to me, “What’s driving you now?” I thought about it and gave him a real answer. I know what is driving me, what forces inside myself keep overflowing to make me act. I might not know them all, but I know some of them. Do you know what is driving you? What is formulating your dreams. I think when we don’t dream, we are closer to weeping. Making things, making art, making a life, building a commmunity is an act of faith, and they all depend on our capacity to dream or imagine.
If I did not dream, I would not know what to do next. I love it when I come across an old journal to find I have written down ten ideas that I want to carry out and see that I have done them. Sometimes I learn that I dicarded them but there is ussually a reason. You need to know what you want, you have to have a way of working out what you want and most likely you might need to find a way of sharing that with someone.
Dreaming is not trite. It is not a tiny silly word on the top of barbies camper wagon, it is a word for women, a word for everyone to carry with them through out their lives. The word dream is the backbone of the word imagination. What dreams do you have for your own life, better still what dreams do you have for your community.
When we dream, then talk about it, then act upon it, our world expands. Tonight as you share a meal with someone, if they are open to it, ask them, What dreams do you have for yourself? What dreams do you have for your community? Ask them ….”Whats driving you now?” Hopefully, you surround yourself with the kind of people that will want to know the same about and ask you back.
Dream big baby, act small but dream big. Keep at it, nurture it, stay focused and be open to change. Let your dreams merge with changes in yourself, with the changes and needs in your community. You can start out with one idea but you have to be a responder to make dreams come true, you have to be willing to comprimise. If you have these abilities then everything else is irrelevant. You need to be able to deal wiith what comes up. Altered dreams are most peoples reality. Look at what we have, and think about how much we can do with it instead of looking at what we need, and what we cannot do because of it.
So I am trying not to mock words like dream, though it is in my nature to mock. I grew up the youngest of seven and was mocked regularly. I carry a new little dream with me all the time, that is how I get things done. I make up a new dream when one gets finished, just so I’ll have a new one to carrry around with me.