WHAT HAPPENED TO YOUR DREAMS?

by Marti
(Gainesville, GA)

Remember your dreams? You were going to sketch beside the waterfalls in Maui? Or travel to Africa? Or turn your hobby into a successful business, making work pleasurable again.

Yeah, that one! The one in which you write the great American novel, pose for the cover of Entertainment Weekly and live happily after after.

Today, instead of the bush in Africa, waterfalls, and south sea breezes, you're clipping coupons for peanut butter, crossing borders for cheaper prescriptions and planning your shopping according to which store has the best specials.

What the hell happened??

Dumb question, huh? You joined the army, got married, had children. You had to go to work. Maybe you had to care for your parents. All sorts of things interfered.

And you got old.

Damn!

Thing is, once we stop dreaming, we stop living. Without a dream, we're just taking up space. As someone said to me the other day, "The only difference between a rut and a grave is the depth."

Unfortunately, most of us don't have the resources to fulfill our earlier dreams of, say, trekking the Himalayas or collecting expensive antiques.

Actually, our resources are far more valuable as they include our energy, our enthusiasm, and our unique talents just waiting to be developed. It's everything you need to become alive again, chasing doable dreams that rejuvenate and satisfy more than a dozen old antiques.

The alternative, mind you, is mental and spiritual rot from the inside out.


Haven't we all had a retired relative who sat around all day every day, abdicating life, believing that was what retirement was all about? To do nothing to enliven their brains and bodies but fill their mouths with complaints. Then they die, perhaps from boredom. So sad.

Isn't it time to develop a new dream? And make that dream a reality?

There are plenty of folks over 50, 60 who are enjoying second careers -- mere hobbies before they retired.

No excuses! OK?!

If you find yourself in a rut without dreams, you'd better move fast before folks think you are dead and bury you.


(some excerpts from Frank Kaiser)