Sometimes, people will say that dreaming is dangerous. But there's nothing wrong with dreaming, honestly. As long as you remember this; dreams can be goals, goals are never fantasies, and fantasies are nightmares. There's a point to that, keep reading.
I've done a lot of dreaming in my life. I don't just mean at night. I mean in life, day to day. The things I've dreamed of have been related to personal and professional dreams. One of the exciting things about dreaming is when you can actually make that dream come to life--like the job you always wanted, that car you worked so hard for that you cut pictures out and posted on your wall. In my old townhouse we had a dream board, where we would cut out pictures of things we wanted and post them there. That's dreaming towards a goal.
When you were a child, you may have dreamed about who you want to be when you grow up. You imagine yourself as a teacher, a firefighter, or a doctor...or something similar to that. At least when I was a child, that's what most kids around me dreamed of. What did I dream of being? I didn't dream of being anything. Quite frankly, I was told what I was going to be at different points in my lifetime. "Oh, you should be a teacher, you're so smart". "Oh, you should be a lawyer, 'cause you love to argue." "Look at you, you're gonna be my Miss America!". Now don't get me wrong, parents and adults are always going to do that--they're going to look at you as a child and aspire you to be everything they couldn't themselves be. That's just the norm of being a grown-up. But when I was little, I couldn't even dream about what I wanted to be when I was older, because all I knew was what everyone else said--teach, sing, lead--I didn't know what I wanted to be.
I mostly dreamed about monsters. There was this one dream I can remember clearly about being chased from my Great-Grandmother's house, up the path, and around the back of my mother's house. I would turn around and he would throw up on me. Then I would wake up. I consistently had that dream until I was about 18 years old. Now I've looked into this and what I found in my research is that being chased by monsters in a dream is perceived as the constant avoidance of something. Hmm. A child. Avoiding something? No wonder kids always dream monsters! Anyway enough of that. What is really the point here?
The point I want to make is that dreaming is NORMAL. I spoke in a prior blog about dreaming of living in a white house, with a wrap-around porch and a picket fence. I'm not going to stop dreaming about that because dreams can also be goals. I dreamed once of being able to design something that was seen by thousands of people--I've done that. I dreamed of being able to fit into my pre-pregnancy jeans--I've done that too. Dreams can be goals, but goals are never fantasies, and fantasies are nightmares. I had a friend once who told me to stop dreaming--no I didn't tell him off. What he failed to understand is that dreaming is a more exciting way of saying pensive preparation; see how much harder that is to say?
I love to dream because dreams bring hope. As quoted from my favorite movie, Shawshank Redemption--"Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things. And no good thing ever dies". Andy had a point when he said this. He dreamed of escaping and he made it to the other side. No matter how many people tried to discourage his hopes and dreams, he kept on going.
I say this, keep on going. Keep on dreaming. There's a lot of things that you can lose, that people can take from you. But no one can take away your dreams.
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