The Weight of Dreams
Life Pivot Post #8
When I was a kid, I had a lot of stuffed animals, about 50 of them. At first, I only had two: Flour the Raccoon, and his trusty sidekick, Puppy the…Puppy.
But over the years, I collected more and more. They filled an entire second bed in my room.
Each of them had a name and a ritual I had to follow to care for it. I had to make sure each one got the right amount of attention, according to its seniority and experience. Certain stuffed animals had to be kept apart from others because of the politics of the group.
And whenever another one would come along, I would adopt it into this complex system. They weren’t just toys or decorations. Every one needed to be cared for and attended to.
I would often be smothered by the heat of them all in the bed with me, but I felt I had to keep each of them.
Understandably, this was really exhausting.
Eventually, my parents made me choose a few to keep. I chose Flour and Puppy and a hedgehog I really liked. I appreciated the ones I had left, and I was able to breathe again. Choosing meant eliminating so I could focus on the ones that mattered.
Dreams can be like that, too.
Life can be an exploration, rather than a chase.
A Caravan of Dreams…Can be a Mess
I had a lot of dreams, too, and many people told me I needed to focus, to pick one.
All I heard was that they wanted me to give up on my dreams, and I refused. That was the last thing I would ever do.
In fact, I collected dreams. I stubbornly insisted I would be everything I ever dreamed. I would be rich, I would create a startup, I would travel the world, I would be as strong as an Olympian, I would earn multiple PhDs, be fluent in dozens of languages, become a Green Beret. And so on.
But just like all my stuffed animals, the more dreams I collected, the less I could breathe. Every dream had to be nurtured, given at least some small bit of my attention every day, if not actual time and energy.
Even if I was successful in moving towards one of my dreams in a given day, I still felt that I was falling behind because the others were stagnating. I couldn’t let go of every dream–expectation I’d ever picked up from others and myself.
So I now work to let them all go, to live without so many dreams.
But without dreams, what do I have?
A Dream for the Self, a Calling for Others
I like to retell the story of Atlas the Titan as a story about voluntary responsibility, rather than enslavement. Nobody else was strong enough to shoulder the weight of the world, and so he took it up.
I think it would be much more interesting to work to find out what we are called upon to do, to find out what way we can be of greatest service to the world, rather than trying to pursue our own idea of greatness.
Life can be an exploration, rather than a chase.
The concept of a “dream” seems so restrictive. It comes from one person–ourself–and stems from our single experience. A calling to service, ironically, is freeing. It arises out of the energies of the age, from our communities, and it turns us into an expression of something bigger.
Finding a calling might seem like the dreaded cry to “seek your passion, follow your bliss, chase your dreams.” But I think seeking to be of use is a different thing from the usual motivation for finding a passion, which is almost invariably selfish.
We seek our passion to be fulfilled, and find ourselves emptied. We seek our calling to be useful, and like a tool put to good purpose, find fulfillment.
Have a good weekend.
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