Dreaming my dreams

Oh, the dreams I have. Except I don’t real­ly, not that I can put my hand on and say, “Here, this is my dream.” I used to have such dreams, dreams it would take a whole after­noon to dream, dreams that a young man could spin into a sto­ry, or a song, or a life.
Can a per­son be too busy to have dreams? And do the dreams from the past whith­er away, crum­bling to dust in the unvis­it­ed attic of the heart? Or are the dreams still there, undreamt for now but wait­ing to be picked up and dreamed into life once again?
I am not sure what my prob­lem is. Is it that I have for­got­ten how to dream alto­geth­er? Or more like­ly, it seems to me, is that my life has changed dras­ti­cal­ly in the past five years, and that while I realise that my old habits of dream­ing no longer work in my cur­rent state, I have not yet been able (or have not yet both­ered) to find a new way of dream­ing, a mode that will fit into my life as it is now and allow my dreams to soar freely once again.

What dreams do I have, for me, for my life, for my future? I want to be a writer, I want to write, fill­ing long shelves full of pages, every page filled with words, my words, words that I real­ly mean. I dream of hav­ing a hour or more each day when, hav­ing ful­filled my respon­si­bil­i­ties, I can with a free heart sit down in a space that is com­fort­able and my own, and in an atmos­phere of qui­et or music of my choos­ing com­mit words to paper as fast and as freely as my ink will flow from my pen.

I dream of liv­ing on a rur­al home­stead, not far from the small city where I ply my trade on week­days. There is a qui­et road in front of our home, where I need not fear to take my son on his first bicy­cle rides. There is a large gar­den, where my wife rais­es an array of flow­ers and herbs, and we cul­ti­vate a crop of veg­eta­bles that will grace our table fresh through­out the sum­mer and fall, and pre­served through the win­ter and into the first days of spring. The hills behind our house roll up and away, man­tled in hard­wood groves where we can walk, point­ing out rev­er­ent­ly to our chil­dren the flo­ra and fau­na that fill our world. There is a wide back yard where we can run and play catch on a sum­mer’s evening, while my wife can sur­round the house with green trel­lised arbours and flower-trimmed paths and cool qui­et places that so delight her.

I dream of a house big enough for a fam­i­ly to live in har­mo­nious­ly, and for loved ones to gath­er in and fill to burst­ing with love and joy. Long qui­et halls open onto high-ceilinged rooms full of nat­ur­al col­or and soft light fil­tered through green leaves. Tall win­dows let in the sun, but no direct beams fall on any books or oth­er pre­cious “fad­ables” in the rooms.

I dream of find­ing a path that I can set my feet upon. I dream of a job that is no mere job — some task done to gar­ner suf­fi­cient pecu­niary com­pen­sa­tion to main­tain a house­hold econ­o­my — but a work. I dream of doing some­thing that I take pride in, that I am inspired by, some­thing that I feel called to in a way that can­not help but lift my heart it a joy­ous shout each and every day.

So yes, I do dream, deep in my heart of hearts. Now I must needs turn my pas­sion and ener­gies to mak­ing some of my dreams come true.

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