♪♫♪ "Dreeeeaaam, Dream, Dream Dreeam" ♪♫♪

After a few hours sleep it seems the ideas and words just keep coming... Questions that I don't have answers for haunt me and run through my mind over and over as I try to find reason in things that happen.  It all goes back to my bad habit of asking, "Why?"  It's so easy to accept "good" things that happen.  Not because I think I deserve them but because they are pleasant to experience. And mostly easy to understand.  Maybe not how or why they happened but how they can fill a void rather than creating another hole.  Ahhh...now we're onto something.  That's what makes me ask "Why?"...wondering how to fill the hole that's left over after not so good things happen in our lives.

"I have a dream.
A song to sing,
to help me cope,
with anything..."

Everybody has a dream, right?  Not the kind that haunts our sleeping moments and are mostly forgotten in the light of day.  I mean the kind that give life meaning, a goal to aim for at some time in the future.  I've been pondering the idea that some folks get so caught up in the dream, they forget to live right now.  There are so many thoughts about the grand things they want to do that reality slowly passes them by and the dreams that really do last a lifetime are lost to plans for the future that may never be fulfilled.  Maybe that's a part of growing up too.  Realizing what's important and focusing on reaching that goal instead of lofty plans that exclude meaningful things in our lives that will really stand the test of time.  Perhaps it's a sort of searching for something that's missing.  Most of the time those somethings are not external experiences but internal ones.  A hole in our lives that needs to be filled with just the right thing to make our hearts feel secure.  A cure for the wanderlust that seems to pick at our minds but never fills the void.
But it's also important to have a dream that you can keep on living so you aren't disappointed with your future when you get there.  It's nice to know that after 27 years of marriage, we're still going. The dream may not have played out the way we thought it would and the road hasn't always been smooth but those things make us stronger.  So now my dream is a reality I can take comfort in; a blessing that I build on as time goes by.  If I had focused on other things a long time ago, I may not have been wrong but I certainly would have missed out.  As a result I have two lovely daughters that bless me on a daily basis.
Sometimes I'm sorry it took us so long to start our family but I think that's a part of the dream that I couldn't really control so I'm sure it turned out just as it should have.  And what would I do without them?!
I guess all this stemmed from some things I've been thinking about that revolve around dreams.  How much of reality do we push aside to reach our dreams?  How much responsibility do we have for planning and taking an active part in making our dreams come true?  You can't live a dream from the outside.  It just can't be done.  Fulfilling dreams are like living a story from the inside.  A fairytale if you will.  One that's all about you and probably involves at least one other person.  If we try to write the story from the outside, as if we're watching from a safe distance while a shadowy version of ourselves actually lives in the dream, we may find satisfaction in creating the tale but sadness because we don't feel any passion.  It's just a pale immitation of what we want to happen.  We may think we're being a part of it because we're the author, at least in part, but in reality, we're weaving a tale about someone else, someone we can't fully relate to.  So the dream is there but empty of the joy we thought it would bring to ourselves and anyone else who's involved.  It's a good story to read and a way to escape the life we're living but it's not really a story about us.  In a sense, rather than being trapped inside, we've effectively protected ourselves so much that we've actually been locked out by our own foolishness.  For dreams to come true, we have to take action, we have to be a part of the story instead of sitting on the sidelines.  Otherwise it's like watching an event unfold that we can cheer for and agonize with but we can't be a part of unless we stop being a spectator and get into the action.  If we don't, we'll miss out but not because dreams don't come true but because the dream we're watching belongs to someone else.