Dreams
Dreams are nice. I don't mean the dreams you have at night, I mean the dreams of things you desire. Visiting that one faraway place, getting that thing that's always out of reach, doing something you always wished to do.
These are the dreams I want to reflect on today.
Untouchable and ideal
I've said this sentence so many times in my life "I wish I could ..." followed by a bunch of stuff, like "visit the Maldives", "write a book" or "learn to scuba dive". And more often than I'm willing to admit I've repeated these sentences. And I think we've all done a variation of it - it's human to dream and have desires.
These desires are ideal - they seem exactly as we want them to, they are perfect and they're nice to have. They are what we hope and strive for, they are perfect.
Am I striving for them?
But then I noticed something: I say "I wish I could", so you'd think I want to reach them, right?
I realised, however, that for things I want, I work towards them and I often accomplish them, too. It may take effort, time, maybe resources like money or material, but I strategically work towards the things I want. And eventually I get there, most of the time.
For these dreams, however, I don't do that. Why? It didn't make sense to me.
Scuba Diving
I looked back at a dream that I actually did accomplish: Learning to scuba dive. It took considerable amounts of fear, uncertainty and a bunch of encouragement from my wife to actually pull the trigger and do it. But why? Scuba Diving has been a dream of mine since I was a child - I saw a documentary about the underwater world of the Maldives and I was sucked in. I had to see this place for myself, I had to explore the underwater world. But did I take any steps in the right direction to get there? No. I didn't even think of doing it, when a coworker turned out to be a dive instructor - it simply didn't cross my mind to ask him and take steps towards learning to dive!
That's wild, isn't it?
We went to the Maldives - THE PLACE WHERE THE DREAM STARTED - a dream itself. We did it! I completely didn't register that this was my chance to also fulfill another dream. It was a second trip to warmer climates, where a try-dive experience was a complimentary offer. So we were in a place with warm water and fishies and it would be a free activity!
You'd think I jumped on the opportunity, eagerly and excitedly, right? No. My wife brought it up, she was surprised I was this hesitant. I wasn't just hesitant, I was scared. Why? What was so scary about it? I swim, I snorkel, I love water, it's free, there's not much else to do on this little island we're staying on - what's the problem?
The problem, as I figured years later, was that this perfect, ideal dream of me floating weightlessly underwater, visiting fishes and exploring a world of wonder, was now under threat. The threat of a harsh collision with reality: What if it was more difficult than I thought? What if I was terrible at it? What if I simply not like it?
What becomes of this beautiful paradise in my head and in my heart, if reality doesn't match? Even if it is exactly like I imagine it, what if I don't have any other dreams ever again? Will that crush me?
Fear is a terrible advisor
I noticed this patterns with a lot of other things in my life: These idealistic, perfect goals - always out of reach, some farther than others, were kept from me by my own fear. Fear of them turning out different than I imagined.
Once I found out that's what's going on, I was even more puzzled. My whole life I was flexible, rolled with the punches, and learned that over-planning almost always leads to frustration. Just look at the goal, do the minimum amount of planning necessary (that is so hard to figure out, though) to give you a reasonable chance to get going. Note: To get going, not "to make it to the goal". Why? Because you never know everything you need to know - there are always unknown unknowns. A plan with too much detail, too much sunken cost makes it harder for you to adjust course as the unknown unknowns make themselves into known unknowns. You need flexibility and agility to turn these surprise guests into opportunities, not obstacles. A rough plan allows for that, because you don't have preconceptions you need to now change. Change is hard.
So, theoretically, I've always dealt with things where the outcome was a rough idea and the path to the goal was a journey over shifting grounds. Life is more like sailing on an ocean rather than driving on a road, I think. So why can't I approach dreams the same way? Because I fear the ocean and yearn for the road. A dream has a clear, defined outcome. I want to get exactly there, not in the proximity and I'm not willing to accept what I otherwise live with: The goal might look differently than anticipated. In fact, for dreams, the anticipation is a numbing drug, it gives you a warm, fuzzy feeling. But what if the actual thing in the end gives you less-good feelings? Maybe even disappoint you?
Go get it
This realisation - yearning for the road and not the ocean - helped me a lot. It allowed me to tackle dreams, to make myself vulnerable, to accept the journey is going to be bumpy and on an unclear path at times. It also did something else, it shifted my view and perception much more fundamentally, but I'll leave that as a future post.
I want to leave you with this: Go for your dreams, embrace the moving waters, rough at times, instead of staring at the horizon doing nothing but dreaming, get in a boat and set the sails. The wind might carry you somewhere else, but the journey will be worthwhile. Your dream might shift a bit, but you'll learn a lot along the way and you'll benefit from that, no matter how the dream turns out.