False Dreams

I’m not sure quite how to talk about this. Other than to start by admitting that I pursued false dreams for a lot of my life.

What is a false dream? A FALSE dream is something on which to focus so as to avoid pursuing the REAL dream.

At first it was kind of obvious. Even to me. My first career was in investment banking. Square peg. Round hole. And strangely I knew THE ENTIRE TIME I didn’t want to do it.

But most of the false dreams were really sneaky. And they got sneakier over time. They looked gooooood.

I started and ran purpose-driven companies for years that were false dreams. I moved to cities and built community for false dreams.

Why? This is a good question. It’s kind of unbelievable how much time, energy, money and risk I invested in false dreams.

Fear of failure? Maybe. I actually think it ultimately it was all about a fear of power. What happens if I actually get everything I want and take up as much space as I really occupy? Holy fuck. That’s a lot of power. That’s a lot of space.

And is it really possible for the world to meet me in this true dream? Can it really be that simple and easy? Do what makes you come alive? That’s it? Can’t be. I must need to alter myself somehow. Some part of it has to suck ass. Life isn’t easy. Money doesn’t grow on trees. Suffering is moral.

Or surely somehow my cracks, flaws and shadows will get in the way. They’ll take me down and ruin it all.

But false dreams are fucking heavy. Like the bigger my creations would get the heavier they would weigh me down.

And then I hit a breaking point.

And then something started to change. I started to let my heart break open. To feel not only my own pain as deeply as possible but also the pain of the world.

And what I realized inside that heartbreak — is that at the bottom of it all — in the depths of the despair that I had always been afraid to feel — there is a hidden trap door. And through that door is a bottomless well of infinite love and possibility. And the knowing that it is exactly the cracks and the flaws and the shadows that make me (us) fit to follow the true dream. It is because of those things that the dream even exists!

But then the mystery world through the trap door told me something very scary. FUCKING LET GO!

And so I did. Letting go in my system feels like surrendering to truth.

And lo and behold amazing shit happens. It is still scary as fuck sometimes. But with a hell of a lot more pleasure and magic. Less drinking from the trough of sorrow. Though I still go slurp from the trough once in a while. Just to stay connected to my roots.

These days I have more freedom, wealth and connection than I’ve ever had in my life. And I can’t really explain how. But I think it has to do with surrendering to the real dream.