You Will Want to Give Up on Your Dream
But true dreams don’t die. They only fade
At some point, you will want to give up on your dream.
You will be plagued by a paralyzing wave of self-doubt, wondering if it was even worthwhile to put energy into this in the first place, to hope that it would even come true. Your dream might feel like a burden already or a dogged reminder of your failures. While before it had seemed glittery and beautiful from afar, when it was still in the realm of fantasy and you hadn’t dared dirty your hands with it, now it simply evokes a vague sense of hopelessness in you, maybe even anger.
I should be there by now, or at least I should have made so much more progress. The steps were so clearly outlined in your mind, and it seemed so simple to follow them.
But there were many monsters that you wrestled with.
The Monster of Beginnings
The first monster was getting started in the first place. It felt better to not do anything and shelve it at the back of your mind, going through day after day enjoying the usual pleasures — a warm ray of sunlight, friends laughing with you, the comfort of money added to your bank.
Because you could be happy without your dream, right? You could live a perfectly satisfying life — and nobody else would know because the dream only lives on inside you, largely invisible to or not taken seriously by the rest of the world.
But there’s a constant pang when you think about it too hard. At 3 AM, or when someone asks you with too-curious eyes what do you really want, or at a funeral where the truth of mortality is before everyone. Or maybe when you wrestle with both inspiration and longing once you see the same dream come true in another person. On the other hand, it could also show up as a flaring of tenderness in your heart, a sense of sharp aliveness triggered by a mere hint.
Of course we can ignore our dreams. Perhaps that’s why they’re called dreams — we’re inclined to bury most of them. You might think it’s impossible, that you’re stuck where you are and don’t have the means to achieve it, or keep on whispering later to yourself — and it fades away just like that, except never quite completely.
You might be scared too about what would happen if you actually do chase it: You will flat on your face. You will work hard for something that may not succeed. Other people will judge you and hate you. There are so many complications. There aren’t enough sensible reasons.
The first monster is terrible and formidable, and it’s the first gatekeeper. It has turned us away, many many times.
Some say that it’s the most dreadful of the bunch and the rest is secondary. But even when you do conquer this monster and finally try to grasp your dream in your hands, deciding to bring it down to earth, you will encounter many more.
The Monster of Failure
The next monster follows closely after the first, trailing your every step. It will whisper grandiose things about your dream, painting a pretty picture that talks about passion and flow, directs you to stories of people who actually finished the journey but turns these into heavily airbrushed fairytales instead.
And because this monster will give you the wrong expectations, you will experience despair when you fall so, so short of what you expected.
It’s supposed to be easy. If this were meant for me, then shouldn’t things be falling into place quickly?
You will freak out about how obstacles keep getting in your way. Dreams will tremble and shiver when you try to pound them into something concrete, but this part is often de-emphasized. People lean towards two extremes: they downplay how difficult it will be, making it seem like you ought to have absolute self-confidence the whole time, or they discourage you from it altogether, citing statistics and your questionable results and the ridiculousness of your dream.
What we often forget in equating bliss with passion is that bliss is not a sustainable state. More cyclical than anything, it will plunge down — and it will go back up eventually, but perhaps not before we start questioning whether we really wanted this dream in the first place. If you trace the word “passion” back to its roots, it means “to suffer.”
And that is what genuine passion is: what are you willing to suffer for? How much can you stand to have your pride and ego broken and still keep on walking? What is the price you are willing to pay for this dream, whether we’re talking years or tears or all the opportunities turned down — and is this price worth it?
Because you will feel cynical. And the second monster will hover in the background, laughing as you hate yourself for being scared and doubtful, as if that weren’t normal and part of the path. It will cast mistakes as failures. It will roar that these are omens for you to stop, that you will never get anywhere.
You will listen to it because it speaks in the voice of your worst fears.
And you must take a deep breath every time and throw the doubt back on it.
The Monster of False Dreams, and Others
Other monsters will gnaw at you too. There’s the monster of comparison, perpetually looking for an opening when you’re scrolling past self-congratulatory social media posts or you’re at a reunion and these are all peers who started at the same place — where are you now?
It will shake its head at all the time and effort you’ve spent on your dream — perhaps all insignificant, all meaningless. It will evaluate your life based on the externals — and declare no other measure of your growth.
Or maybe the monster of an unsupportive family. The monster of financial limitations. The monster of too many things to do, from a job that works you to the bone to a baby that demands your constant attention. The monster of an identity that seems so incompatible with your dream that you can’t even accept the possibility of it happening.
And perhaps the most traitorous of all — the monster of a false dream.
It takes other people’s dreams and spins you to believe that they are yours. These usually belong to your parents or family. Maybe you want approval or recognition and this dream fulfills that — never mind what else it doesn’t give you. More often, it’s a dream that’s idolized by your culture. Fulfill this, and you win instantly in the eyes of others.
Because the path there is well-trodden too, you will never be alone, and there are limitless signposts — but then you’ll wonder why somehow it feels lonely. And when you do finally build that dream with your own hands, there’s only emptiness after the initial applause.
Because it was never your dream. In fact, the monster diverted you from that direction. Dreams may be fantasy at first, but they never disappear. Pursue someone else’s dreams, and your own dreams will still be there waiting for you at the end of it all, the lure no less stronger than before.
To determine if it’s your dream or someone else’s, ask yourself: why do you want to chase after it? If your answer falls along the lines of “because it’s what I should be doing” or “it’s what my family wants for me” or “it’s what everyone else does,” then it’s not your dream.
Or go for the more direct question: what would it be like if you never went after the dream your whole life? A strong aching in your chest — a sense of emptiness or regret — means that it’s your dream. Mild disappointment or confusion — as if you could do away with it and simply search for a substitute to fill the hole it left — means that the dream belongs to someone else.
There is a Gift that Only You Can Give to the World
All these monsters require vanquishing.
But as Rilke said:
“Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.”
In the Hero’s Journey, the hero faces all sorts of trials and monsters, and these must be conquered before the next step of the path reveals itself. As grim as this may sound, the hero is also given plenty of resources to complete the quest: a mentor, community, occasional opportunities that seem to happen out of luck, and the inner strength to conquer whatever appears.
So greet your monsters in the eye. Acknowledge that you might be living with them for a while and that they’re signs of progress along your path — because every time you stand up against them, you gain confidence in yourself, and you realize that self-doubt and failure cannot break you.
Without the trials along the way, the hero would not learn courage — it would simply be a mundane passing, an everyday occurrence that anyone could have done rather than a unique blazing thread that you poured into.
And know you are not alone. There are thousands, if not millions of people experiencing what you’re experiencing, whether in the present or somewhere in the past, and they would be able to say for themselves word for word exactly what’s happening to you.
But the Hero’s Journey doesn’t end with achieving your dream. It will be magnificent, of course, and a smile will bloom inside of you, the culmination of so many hopes and chances taken and missteps and continuous effort, of perhaps defying what you thought was out of your reach.
Still, the Hero’s Journey will not leave you there. It will nudge you back to the kingdom that you came from, where everyone else can benefit from, and rejoice over the gifts of your quest, the fulfillment of your dream.
When you follow your dream, the world celebrates.
When you turn your back on your dream, the world weeps — because it will have lost something important, something that nobody else could have given it. Only you.
