Hold On to Your Dreams

Our dreams will fade away if we let them.

Photo by Gabriel Jones on Unsplash

A few years ago, I saw a former colleague of mine. We exchanged pleasantries and reflected on old times.

“What are your future plans?” she asked. “I am not sure” I answered. “I just know that I have to make a few changes in my life.”

She asked if I remembered telling her that when I left my current job, I would not teach in a classroom again.

“Did I say that?” I blurted out automatically.

I had not remembered. Until that moment.

But that memory touched something deep within me. Inside, a fire was reignited.

After she left, I told myself that I was not going to forget that dream again. I resolved to move forward and carry out the required actions so that I could remain true to what I had said.

If we do not hold on to our dreams, life has a way of making us forget them.

Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly. — Langston Hughes

A similar thing happened to one of my former students. I will call her Sue.

Sue wanted to be a painter. I wrote numerous recommendation letters for her when she was applying to various colleges to pursue her painting dreams.

But it was in 2009 when the global recession was starting. Sue’s parents could not afford to send her to any of these schools. Plus, her parents could not see how becoming a painter would help her get a job or pay the bills.

According to her parents, she was wasting her time and they were not going to allow her to waste their money. Sue remained at a local college and studied accounting instead.

Always a hard-working student, by the time I saw her a few years later, she had gotten an intern position at one of the top accounting firms in the country.

I asked her what became of her dreams of becoming a painter. She looked at me as if I was crazy. “Who said I wanted to become a painter?” She asked. She was genuinely puzzled.

I reminded her of the applications she had sent to various schools to pursue this art form. I knew because I wrote the recommendation letters.

Slowly I saw in her eyes the look of remembrance. She had totally forgotten about what she had wanted to do.

The memory was so powerful for her that she stopped speaking for a while. She shook her head several times as if to stop the memories from taking over her mind.

She then told me that painting was the past. She was happy in her accounting job.

Photo by RhondaK Native Florida Folk Artist on Unsplash

I remember as a little girl how much I loved to write. I had my books full of poems.

But what future was there in writing? I felt foolish for wishing for what could be of no use to me and so I put down the book with my writings.

As a grown adult, one day my sister told me that she had stumbled across that book with my poetry.

At that moment all the memories came back. I remembered how I was able to transport myself to another place and time when I wrote. She asked if I wanted to see the book. I told her no.

I was teaching now. What did writing have to do with anything? That was a long time ago anyway. In my mind, I was no longer that young girl who did not know much about life and anything. So, I let that feeling and that memory go.

Believe me, life and time will cause you to let go of your dreams. The sad thing is that you won’t even realize when it is happening.

To be fair, just because you wanted to do something when you were younger does not mean that you will still want to do it when you are older and more mature. When I am saying is that it should be a choice. It should not be because you forgot or dismissed what you wanted.

So, when my son told me that he wanted to have his own company one day, I told him to write it down. Will he own his own company one day? That will be for him to decide. He will know that it was one of his dreams and possible pathways. Now he can consciously decide if that is a pathway that he wishes to pursue.

Go back into the corridors of your past and remember what you wanted to do and why you wanted to do it. Even as a thought exercise. See if what you wanted to do back then is what you are doing today. If it is not the same, ask yourself why. The truthful answer might surprise you.

Hold on to your dreams and don’t let them go. I got lucky. Writing and I reconnected. Now my joy is full and complete.

What lies behind you, and what lies in front of you, pales in comparison to what lies inside of you. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

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© Jacquline Dacres 2023. All Rights Reserved

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