Following My Dream
“Be Brave. Take risks. Nothing can substitute experience.”
The vast majority of my memories involve the incessant pursuit of a dream. I do remember a time before the prominence of music, though the memories are just snippets derived from my adolescence. But regardless the “dream”, I had a resonant understanding in my young mind that it was to be followed unyieldingly.
There were oddball years where I traveled down different paths of passions in my imagination. I tried each one out like a potential new hat. Those memories, still more frequent in my childhood, do extend through my high school experience. It wasn’t until my sophomore year of high school (at the peak of my ornithologist fantasy) when someone introduced me to Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist, that I finally found the words I had been missing to describe my mindset on life. From then on, I’ve been dead set on my goals of singing as a profession.
The overall point I’m trying to get at is that despite not always feeling sure of the direction I was going, I have always been driven to go. I’ve found this to be rare, and frankly short of a commodity, amongst the individuals shuffled beside me in my path. I have observed a great deal of admiration towards inspirational quotes and ideas encouraging the pursuance of dreams as lifetime goals...but I have also failed to see the admirers, in any degree, actually do it. Not that I mind, I’ve just always wondered why. I would find myself asking, if you believe it will make you happy, why is it unrealistic? Is it unrealistic for you to be happy?
I don’t think anyone conscientiously thinks of acting on their dreams as practicing self love. I certainly didn’t either until seeing my metamorphosis due to exploitation of my selfless nature creating a lack of self love. That’s when I understood. It can be terrifying reaching for that big star in your life. Current situations get comfortable. Things that cause unhappiness can get comfortable. Which leaves taking that initial baby step equivalent to reaching for forbidden fruit.
It takes courage to move in the direction of your dream. Especially when it isn’t labeled “dependable” or “involves no risk”. Frankly? (For those of you who roam pinterest or blogs in your free time) I am really tired of stumbling upon little stories about “The Reality” or “The Hard Part of [My Dream] that No One Told Me About” because I already know that it’s difficult. Not that sharing knowledge from experience is a bad thing, but it takes guts to even convince yourself to go for it. The real hard part is finding the conviction to keep flopping one foot in front of the other regardless if there is a single cell of confidence in any step you place. By the time anyone makes it to the point these authors are remembering in their writing, they’ve already conquered the worst part: their own demons! Meaning that with a little bit of ingenuity, it’ll all work out just fine! There is no need to scare anyone away from a field of entrepreneurship or “weed” anyone out. Instead, I think it would be nice to stumble upon some sort of real life inspiration for a change.
What I found in my journey is that despite the agile mindset I have uniquely carried throughout my life, when I finally reached the stage of turning in my two weeks at my day job, I was still terrified. It was an experience of worlds colliding, a physical quake of my consciousness as the bridge connecting my fantasies and my tangible reality dissipated leaving my most interpersonal beliefs in myself exposed for all to see. People were actually seeing me for the very first time, right in front of me. Their reactions of my honesty was nerve wracking even through my determination not give their opinions more weight than my own.
Yet conjointly with my vulnerability, I felt a relieving kind of euphoria at finally getting to see the luminessence reflecting off of my dream in the daylight. In every look of deliberation was also the subtle glow of life I had finally managed to breathe into existence. And so, every day at the end of my last shifts working retail, I was perfectly happy to be afraid.
Truthfully, experiencing fear at the precipice of your dream is very beautiful. The doubt of knowing what to do is part of what makes us real. We may not know what is going to happen after the present has ended, but at least we know that what we do in response to that following moment is what makes us in control of our life. How we choose to live is a precious gift we each individually possess and can only be given, not taken, away.
I hope, even if you haven’t found it in yourself to quite yet, that you follow your heart wherever it leads you. I hope that you fight for your dreams. I hope that you reach the fine line between your fantasies and your waking life, and I hope you sever it to create the reality you desire. Fighting for my own dreams is what allowed me to both accept, and learn to love, my whole self which consequently provided my life with an abundance of true happiness. I can sincerely say that there is no greater provider of opportunity to flourish in life than the practice of self love and finding it within yourself to pursue your dreams.
And so dear reader, I wish you self love and all of its many treasures. No matter the direction, go. For “not all those who wander are lost” (J.R.R. Tolkien).
