Choosing Dreams

[by Tealee Brown for Hearts Unfiltered, Edition II]

image by the author

Dreams are easy. Maybe not always and maybe not for everyone, but they should be. And for me on most days they feel so. I  know I’m not alone in this. Many of us are almost always dreaming up some world and passionately basking in the possibility of their fulfillment. I like to think that in a single lifetime, humans entertain as many dreams as they breathe. I am (living) proof.

A while ago, I had one of those sly melancholic days. It was a day full of dreaming in abundance but also a silent unyielding gloom characterized the day. The next afternoon, I sent a long passionate voice note to a soulmate. This was a voice note of me essentially venting about dreams, the ease with which I acquire and create them, versus the heaviness and doubts with which I hold and carry them. After I went on and on, my love shared a perspective that has stuck with me. She said to me that it has helped her to think of dreams as these things not entirely or exclusively belonging to us. She shared that it helps to think of them as floating things which everybody can gaze upon, encounter, inspect, and eventually choose from. Most vitally, she shared that not every dream we encounter is meant for us (i.e meant to be fulfilled through us). The idea that not every dream we encounter is ours to pursue wasn’t new to me, but hearing the sentiment shared in her own terms felt both like an affirmation and a rediscovery. Also, I had never thought of dreams as floating things so that was new to me.

The more I think about what my friend shared, the more I agree with her. When I think about how at any given moment somebody somewhere is potentially dreaming of the same things as many others across time and space, the more I am confronted with the possibility that we may indeed live and share a collective dream. The more I am faced with the possibility of that truth, the more I also entertain the likelihood that dreams aren’t ours exclusively, that they’re the world’s, simply in our peripheral because we exist in the world. This would also suggest that indeed not all the dreams we gaze upon are ours to pursue and/or fulfil.

A key aspect of my frustration with dreams and dreaming as I expressed to my friend that day, lied with how incapable we are as human beings to pursue and fulfill all the many dreams we gaze upon in our lifetimes. We are so excruciatingly limited. Venting, I shared that I felt because we get so many dreams in a single breath, and so many we feel deeply about, while at the same time being brutally aware we couldn’t possibly bring them all to fruition, we’re set up to feel like helpless failures. It all felt very painstaking in that moment. And because I am an extremist 23 hours and 30 minutes every day, I went as far as suggesting that I wish dreams were harder and that we got fewer in a lifetime, because then they might not feel so counterproductive— I renounce all claims to this suggestion.

This conversation with my friend is an example of why one of my most cherished things is pondering conversations with like-hearted friends. Through these conversations, I am inexplicably affirmed and drawn closest to the answers my heart seeks. My friend not only shared my interest in dreams, she shared my frustration, my deep concern in that moment, and provided a grounding perspective that has shifted my worldview for the better. Affirming moments like these make me wonder how my bones can ever dare to feel lonely especially on so many days.

Thinking about dreams with my friend has led me to realize how important it is to intentionally approach the dreams we gaze upon, so that we are to the best of our knowing, able to separate those that are truly ours to fulfill, from those we simply have encountered by virtue of being in a shared and collective world and dream. I believe that a big part of this separation process is choosing. We must choose the dreams that call deepest to us and willfully honor them every day we get. I also think that in order to fully honor the dreams that we have chosen, we must give up claim to the rest, trusting that the universe is aligned and powerful enough to fulfill those dreams through the right people.

There is space for every dream. And there is space for each one of us. Infinite amount of space. We have to believe this. It takes believing this to let go of your claim on every dream. It takes believing this to rest in the truth that somewhere it’s happening, that somewhere in somebody a dream is alive and being manifested. The world is wide enough for all of us, all our hopes and dreams can be held and there will be space left for even more still.

---

Read Edition II of Hearts Unfiltered Here.