The Curious Case of Dreams that Won’t Stop
Once adult life begins, reality intervenes.
Insects change from fascinating study to pests, running changes from fun to calorie burn.
You notice that unlike what you had fantasized, earning a living requires more skills than a love for history. You also realize that humming a few tunes does not guarantee a job as a singer and that philosophizing is not really a viable profession.
In the quest, then, to achieve what is, financially and emotionally, a pragmatic life, you get the right degree, hobnob with the right network and filter through the right job openings.
You land the safety cocoon of a satisfying job that keeps you busy and pays your bills.
One of the following could follow.
1. You are happy where you are and you want to continue at the same pace with the same skills. Did you not spend the better part of your youthful post-teen years preparing for this landmark of a job?
2. Your immense relief at making it is followed by a “what’s next” affliction. Owing to your untiring dedication to your career, working hard is far too ingrained into your neural makeup to allow a rest on your laurels.
3. Your childhood dreams of becoming a singing historian begins hounding you again.
If you get afflicted with the third syndrome, you may be frustrated. Having let those unrealistic ideas die, you do not want to begin another set. You are dedicated to your career and you aim to flourish in it–these dreams do not assist you in your goals.
Why, then, the need to take up photography? Why the compulsion to stay up late at night tinkering with wood pallet picked from home improvement stores? Why? Why? Why?
But it is quite all right.
These are not the drummed up silliness you can no longer afford. These dreams will subtract nothing from your practical goals; these dreams might propel you to get better at what you want, and perhaps, in some future take you into a life you had always longed for.
Take the case of Kathy Adams. A trained Engineer, she spent much of her professional life as a Field Engineer for Intel. Meanwhile her life-long dream was to take up a cause and help others. When in Costa Rica on work assignments in late 1990s, she began helping children who could not afford uniforms and backpacks to schools. In a few years, she had learned enough to open a non-profit that could help these children on a more permanent basis. Today, her non-profit, Empowerment International, supports and enables education of more than 300 children in Nicaragua.
You might not even switch into a different mode of life and still gain.
A dream to become a soccer pro might not be feasible for various reasons but staying active in amateur games would keep you fit while allowing you to, perhaps, become a coach at your kid’s team practices. Fitness + bonding + adulation, in one fell swoop.
At various times in my post-graduate life I have dreamed of becoming an interior designer, a quantum physicist and a writer. Throw in the random hopes to take up landscaping and professional dance, and you get the picture of a mind continually churning newer and more impossible plans.
What I have realized is that each of these dreams can still be part of my life and help me with my current career.
I am a product designer, I think about user experience and usability on a daily basis.
Admiring Eichler homes and mid-century modern designs gives me inspiration on clubbing functionality with form. Reading about the vastness of space, and about the complexities of black hole and string theories, calms me down–it provides perspective on my failures and successes. Attempts at writing help me structure my thoughts and enable storyboarding–essentials for a logical and usable design workflow.
Einstein was known to be a dedicated violinist. President Obama plays basketball. Emily Dickinson was an accomplished baker. Meryl Streep knits, Susan Sarandon is a ping pong enthusiast, Warren Buffett plays ukulele.
There are only so many hours and so many days and we have so much to do, so much to achieve. But a dream is at least worth exploring.
I might not excel, I might not succeed, but I will have tried and I will have enjoyed those moments. That is what we did as children, and perhaps, these impossible dreams let us continue with our child-like wonder and passion a little longer.
