I can only see hope and beauty.

A question about our dreams.

How do you dream? It’s a strange question, I know, but anyone who knows me or indeed anyone who has been reading these posts for some time will find my asking a strange question entirely predictable. Please don’t feel that I am being too invasive, I am not talking about the dreams in which you are standing in front of your 8th grade class about to present an oral and then somehow your class has turned into a speakeasy and your grandmother is there and she’s talking to your crush? If that sounds like your dream, I think you should stop drinking that 9:46PM RedBull.

What I’m interested in are your aspirational dreams. I have many dreams, but somehow they all feel different, they each make use of a different medium in my mind. My career goals have changed so many times that rattling off the list takes more time than it’s worth. When I think about my career goals they feel like translucent vignettes, slow and somewhat intangible snapshots of my possible future. But I get caught up in so many questions around what I want and what I should want and why I should want what I do want, that those images are never more than wispy clouds, high and out of reach. Most of my career or work driven aspirations are feelings rather than visions. I want to be successful, I want to be driven. They feel more like a list of attributes and skills that I move from the right to the left of a mental chart once I acquire them.

My personal dreams look totally different in my mind, though. The dreams I have about a home and a family are so much more visceral. Where my career dreams feel as though they take place on a stage in my mind, the hopes I have for a family totally encapsulate it. When I dream of my future, I am bombarded with wonderful snapshots of what my life could look like, each filled with effortlessly warm light and laughter and love. It feels very similar to the way I romanticise my memories, I can only see hope and beauty. For a moment, I am there, in a world that I dream of, that I long to be a part of. The more I indulge myself, the more these scenes begin to rapidly fly past my eyes, accelerating until they become a brilliant white light. And then I’m left, sitting at my kitchen table, grinning like a fool.

I hope that you have at least one dream that sweeps you off your feet.