As I approach a milestone birthday, one question has come out of hiding to torment me: will all my hopes, goals, and work manifest into the dream life I’ve always imagined?
It’s a question I’ve always known the answer to, without giving it much thought. And lately, as the years roll by, the question has gone from a whisper to a taunt, emboldened by my fear and doubt. The question became so persistent that it forced me to face it squarely and give it an answer I fully believed.
I had always believed the answer to be yes. That one day, I would create the life of my dreams.
Early in my adult life, I started setting goals. I was out on my own, making meaningful decisions, and embracing full responsibility for my life and what would become of it.
Self-help articles, books, podcasts, and videos all pointed to a basic tenet of success - goal-setting. So, always a student of life, I developed S.M.A.R.T. goals that informed as much of my daily tasks as I could handle. Over the years, I’ve accomplished goals, adjusted them to fit emerging needs, saw goals morph into something new or fade until I hardly recognized them as mine.
What remained constant were the goals themselves. Those constant beacons of what should be, and what could be with the right efforts.
Unfortunately, what had always felt like a friend, had started to feel like a foe as uncertainty around achieving a dream life grew.
There was a time during youthful ignorance when I had no doubt I could achieve every goal. Everything around me spoke to what is accomplished through hard work and persistence. Never give up. Find your tribe. Do one thing.
Naysayers to the grind were called complacent. Those who failed weren’t trying hard enough, gave up too early. Their goal was likely right on the other side of their last failure. Keep going, keep going.
I’ve gone and gone and gone, and have made countless sacrifices to accomplish my goals. That dream life that checks all the boxes.
My dream life always revolved around freedom.
It makes sense after growing up in a strict, religion-driven household, that I would grow up to seek escape. A life guided by nothing but the desires of my heart and mind. Unstructured and lavishly comfy, a reprieve that wrapped me in everything I loved: slow mornings, books, nature, travel, novelty, beautiful things. What else? Anything else, really, depending on my mood.
I latched on to this vision, pushing myself to achieve it, narrowing my life to create a straighter path to this dream. Until I learned to step outside of my self-centeredness and see the world around me.
I was raised with the belief that I was special. Unique, smart, and able to accomplish anything I set out to.
As life is teaching me its lessons, I realize that across all factors, among people past and present, I average out as human. And that the true human experience leaves so much unfulfilled if the focus is always on what comes next, what we don’t have, and the goals we must achieve.
This brings me to the answer that started as a whisper, but gets louder each day: I’ve lived my dream life many times over and will continue to do so in each moment that energizes, uplifts, and fills me with content.
Happiness isn’t a future state.
Happiness is found in the day to day, moment to moment. It’s available to me now, as I spend a slow morning doing one of the things I’ve always loved doing.
Each moment spent in those things that speak to one's soul is a moment spent in a dream life.
I realized that I’ve had plenty of what fulfilled me already. I didn’t need to wait until some hopeful endstate to enjoy it. I had what I needed to enjoy life and the only thing remaining to do was to embrace it.
Because the truth is that I will leave this existence with things undone. How long should I strive and struggle before good enough is good enough?
My grandfather helped me reach that decision by telling me about the things on his wishlist. Dreams that he’s had for years that he was holding out hope to achieve. It opened my eyes to the way of dreams, endless, limitless desires, driving our mindstates and actions, showing up as shifting beacons of hope and discontent.
I realized that decades from now, dreams would still tug at me, having morphed over and over. Always something more. Inspired by the idea that if your dreams don’t scare you, they aren’t big enough.
But dreams are an escape, a tug from reality.
A longing for what I don’t have. And that focus takes me out of the present and into a realm I have less control over. One that is constantly shifting and fleeting. Unstable. Above average.
It’s a disservice to myself to spend so much time on dreams. Fooling myself into thinking that the life I have now - after years of working toward goals - isn’t enough to enjoy and settle into. I don’t have the grand, Scrooge McDuck, riches in a vault wealth I envisioned, but what I have is real and it's good and I'm wealthy in so many ways.
This knowledge gives me the courage to surrender. I happily wave the flag, announcing to the world that I have arrived. I am no longer looking toward the imagined, perfect life of my dreams. Instead, I am happy to live my dream life, as it presents itself to me right now.
A lazy, unstructured morning, where I could have done so many things, but woke up excited to do what I’ve always loved doing. Where I can follow the pull to write something and where I’m grateful to be able to do so.
With an understanding that this may not always be my experience, so I must appreciate it now as I have it. Full of vibrations and endless gratitude for what I have in this moment. Because this moment is all we ever have.
