The Language of Lost Dreams

If you’re like me, a person so fond of breaking any possibility because the first step tastes bitter, then you understand what losing dreams to fear feels like. Every what-if burned into our retinas, every happy ending seared into our minds, every second of the moments that could’ve lead to a forever we’ll never be able to find.

Or is that all we choose to understand — that these ladders of missing links seemingly lead to nothing?

There’s a notion that dreams die young because reality hits our faces faster than the sunrise kissing us good morning, and perhaps there is truth there. For youth tends to be a fleeting memory, we fall short the moment we trip on traps planned for us to overcome. To escape, we excuse ourselves from a chance to stand up because we can’t take any more mindlessly earned bruises. Whether or not wounds chisel our ego, we make sense of our fleeing to find safety. We find security in never diving in head first, and for whatever reason, it is our rinse-and-repeat.

Now, what if instead of finding our end-all-be-all, we make it ourselves? That couldn’t be the case, it’s nothing short of silly. Painting a picture we couldn’t see in our heads, building a bridge recklessly and starting in the wrong place, having faith in something so out of reach, it’s all too silly. But despite this, we still climb no matter how tired our arms are from stretching it too far. Touching the handlebars just barely within our grasp, a challenge we impose on ourselves in the hopes of being satisfied with the end result. Is that all we consider to be good labor?

What about allowing ourselves to cascade with a rushing river? Have we tried to let it go, and let the bigger picture take us in? Have we allowed ourselves to be painted by everything, instead of painting everything when we’re in that bothersome blur? In the same manner that bodies of water branch out organically, weathering whatever path it touches, we can also leave our hands to our pockets and let our legs think for themselves. There are journeys we can choose to take, but there are journeys that are best travelled aimlessly. Life has its way of showing us pathways to the end. We drink the cocktail of adrenaline, anxiety, and appreciation — only to wake up with a hangover riddled with unfamiliarity, skepticism, and doubt. We take a shot with so much forethought, yet without any as well.

Unfortunately for us, we look for the right answer not knowing that they’re all correct in their own way. It’s what we make of these answers that gives us the first impression that something is wrong. We may have taken the first step with an itinerary, one that may not fit because we haven’t even gone through the kilometers of our decision. We miss our target the moment we realize the target is intangible. We drive ourselves crazy with goals, only to realize that we’d be better off preparing for the long road.

And now, we are stuck. Seconds feel a lot shorter, and we’ve missed all the meticulously carved details in our little rollercoaster rides. The yearning for satisfaction has been stretched, as if it would take years to realize that the goal we’ve reached is not enough. We lose the bravado we’ve built at the start, and the more we success without taking in the scenery, the less we see the worth of the end.

To remember that time well spent is meant to be cherished, not skimmed through, is a language we simply can’t pick up at a snap. These lost dreams are also lost in translation, because we throw in so much effort for the ending, and not its story.

Figuring all of it out before even figuring out the steps and misunderstanding the thoughtless bliss of dreaming tends to be nothing short of tragic, but to travel by letting everything take its course, to ferment a possibility before its hour of tasting, to let our hands paint the picture for us is a journey we’ve rehearsed unconsciously.

Take a step back, and let the board move you forward. Pause magnifying success, and let the bigger picture magnify you.

And whether or not it makes sense in the end, all is done in good faith for our happiness in the making.