Begin it Now
an ode for when we need encouragement to follow our dreams, and the need to whittle them down
“One cannot collect all the beautiful shells on the beach. One can collect only a few, and they are more beautiful if they are few.” Anne Morrow Lindbergh
This is an ode to discourage discouragement. A song for all of us who have dreams that never quite seem to come true. Oh, we get glimpses of our reveries and we toil at them even when their promises are dimmest. We make sacrifices for them, do the dirty work and then we push them aside when the dreams of others need to come first or the quotidian stakes its claim to our time and energy. And yet, we are dreamers, still, investors of time and patience and love and hope. And somehow we know that what we love and what we love to do is worth the work, and the wait. In many ways our dreams are what we live for.
What happens though when life takes over and we begin to hear the voice in our head, “It’s time to give it up. You’re not a child anymore. Dreams are not practical and what you’re needing is a good stiff highball of practical.” What happens when other people don’t value what our own heart values, even to the point of making us feel guilty for dreaming at all? This is when many people give up. This is the moment when so many dreamers turn around and head home, just when they were about to round the corner and discover the end of the rainbow. I’ve been there so many times, and I keep wondering if the next time will do me in and I’ll be the one turning and walking away.
Recently, someone made an unknowingly discouraging comment to me about my dream to be eventually earning a modest living by writing fiction. “But you need a real job, regardless.” Well, yes, certainly it's true that I need additional income in the present moment and probably forever, but what’s so wrong with having that as my dangling carrot, the hopes of being a novelist full-time? And since when isn't writing a real job? It made me feel like this person didn’t have faith in my abilities, and it also made me question my abilities. It prompted that nagging anti-dreamer voice to echo through my brain, “Get practical! Maybe it’s time to give up and get a real full-time job instead of being a self-employed artist, teacher and writer. And all this time you spend on writing could be put to better use.” I listened for a minute. And then I whispered a very solid four letter word followed by the word OFF. I am not ignoring my livelihood to sit and work on my novel all day. The fact is, it’s often the very last thing I do, and rarely at that. And you know what? That is something that has to change.
My dreams are my greatest intangible treasures. A few of them have to do with the people I love most and my desires for them, but the ones I hold closest for my own self are often what get me through and create another dimension to my life. I can visualise my dreams, but they are not tangible. I can work at them, but they are not easily measured in terms of progress. And I admit that when things in my life go awry I often cling to them too tightly. So tightly that I find it hard to take practical action for anything at all. I’m a dreamer. What can I say? And there is something in me, some inexplicable thing that I have been aware of for many months now, that is telling me it’s time to look my biggest dream in the face and give it everything I’ve got.
Have you ever thought of something, or even dreamed of its possibility, and then just knew it had to happen? Something so vital to you that you were willing to take great risks, knowing very well that you could fail? How do you react to something like that? There are times when I have taken it by the reigns and galloped, for instance how I took action when a friend planted the seed that eventually became an amazing journey to becoming a full-time artist and teacher. But I’ve also reacted by pushing it it aside, or simply resolving to let something happen naturally without responding in any way except to acknowledge it. Well, this time it’s different. This time I feel like I don’t have a choice. It’s use it or lose it time. Cue Eminem’s Lose Yourself. “Success is my only mother&$%^!@' option, failure's not.” Yes, I really do hear that line winnowing through my brain, and often.
The one thing that stands in my way the most is that I’m always juggling far too many things. I also have too many dreams: live in a thatched roof cottage on the Irish coast of the Celtic Sea; have a winter cottage in the snowy Maine woods; travel to Japan and walk the path of Bashō and see a Snow Fairy bird in Hokkaido; journey across America with the man I love, with a Scotty camper trailer attached to my 1954 Ford pick-up, robin’s egg blue, with no maps except for Steinbeck’s book, “Travels with Charley;” take a walk in Mary Oliver’s neck of the Massachusetts woods and see the places I’ve experienced through her eyes when I read her poetry; attend the summer session of the Ruskin School of Drawing at Oxford, and on and on and on. Not very practical dreams, hey? And these are just the ones I swept off the top of my head. So there is my first step, to whittle down the magnitudes of my heart’s desires to a very few things. Things like physically holding a published novel in my hands that is an accumulation of all of my hard work at writing; that’s one I can sink my teeth into. Or even driving to Nebraska to stand in the middle of a prairie and feel the wind oscillating the grasses, so tall that they tower over my head; that’s something for which I could probably plan. See what I mean?
I’m learning that we can, to some extent, do anything that we truly set our heart and mind on, but that we can't do everything, and it’s the everything that overwhelms me. I can’t help house and educate orphaned children in Africa while donating my talents to help save land in Western New York while writing articles to help farmers create a more sustainable way to put food on America’s tables as I volunteer for the local food bank by designing and maintaining their Web site and help to keep one of our beloved state parks from shuttering. Yes, in the past I’ve tried to do all of those things, even within the same month, and even today those kinds of things are all still occupying space in my head, in my heart and in my life, tugging at me with their insistent voices, “Hey! What about me?” Something’s gotta give. It’s all about priorities and choosing what’s most important. Easier said than done, right? Some wise man once said that the most important thing in life is knowing the most important things in life. That’s just way over my head. Besides, what’s important to me might not be worth a hair on a mouse’s chin to anyone else. Nope, the secret to my sanity and my success will only come from two things: prioritising and letting go of some of the things that fall to the bottom of my lists.
There are some things in life that can’t be abolished, or even set aside. The work you do for your paycheck is one of them. Certain daily and weekly home responsibilities are another. And, of course, caring for and being supportive of family and closest friends, and just enjoying life with them. Everything else is on the negotiating table for me right now, and I’m hoping to give a good two-thirds of it the guillotine. It all seems to boomerang back to my life-long dilemma, how to distill my energies down to a few things so I can really do them well. So I’m not so scattered and distracted. So I can finally accomplish something worthwhile, you know, like my biggest dream of finishing and publishing my first novel. Am I the only person in the universe who has this problem? Of course I can’t be, but I sure wish you kindred souls would present yourselves to me so we could form an alliance and help one another take the axe to the things that just need to go. The problem is that so many things beckon me, everything fascinates, and I want to get my fingernails into it all. Life is short and the list is long. And I’m sure it has something to do with the fear of honing my time and energy into a very few things and still coming up short. Did I mention that I come up short on the self-confidence side now and again, too?
I believe it takes courage to give our dreams a name and write them down and go after them. Courage I don’t always have, that I allow to get waylaid, detained and otherwise intercepted by a myriad of excuses and other things. It’s time to let go of the familiar fears and the things that seem to make me feel secure but aren’t serving me well at all. The familiar has no security when it’s no longer meaningful or helping you on your way to something better. That famous, and overused, quote by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe comes to mind: “The moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves as well. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favour all manner of unforeseen accidents, meetings and material assistance that no one could have dreamed would come their way. Whatever you can do or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now.” Brings some goosebumps and a tear, doesn’t it? Begin it now.
Tell me about your dreams. How are you living in ways to make them happen?
Well, well, well.
I love this reflection Kateri. Your ability to set down clearly thoughts, recognitions and ideas to plan for today and tomorrow. Take any paragraph, insert Judy’s very similar, yet different, dreams and there you go, my response to your query. My dearest, longest friendship is tied up with a woman that sees me in ways I know are true. Kate said “Judy you are a dreamer, and it’s a beautiful thing.”
An example of not giving up dreams. Two days ago Chris and I were driving route 240, and I sort of moaned about the fact that I had yet to see an eagle. Chris had seen two, just the week before, on this route. My friend Paul is the eagle whisperer and seems to see them daily. I closed my eyes and sighed a hope out into the universe. Two hours later, in our backyard, an adult eagle swooped through, low in flight. I marveled, I was awe struck and then wondered if it was real. Yes it was, Chris had watched with me. Yet, I felt unsure. Twenty minutes later, same path, same level of flight. The totality of this experience reminded me to keep faith, in myself, my connection to ‘everything bigger’ than I can fully grasp. And never let go of my dreams.🕊️🦅
For some reason, this reminds me of the time I told someone that my daughter is an artist, and she laughed. "What's so funny?", I asked. She stammered a bit, then told me that it was the way I said it. The way I said it? I just said it. I didn't say it in any particular way. Upon reflection, I realized that she was probably doubtful that anyone could make it as an artist. I don't remember who she was, but it is in these ways that others pull our dreams out from under us. Haha, your daughter is an artist? Well, as a matter of fact, she is a set dresser, draper and welder for the film industry. And I mean big films, like Jumanji 2, and The Color Purple. The memory of that woman's reaction still makes me feel insecure and doubtful, not only about Maren's dreams, but of my own. I always wanted to be an artist, too. Some might say I am, others may try to pull me down. It's not easy to be a dreamer. I love this piece, Kateri. Thank you ❤️.