TOW: Living the dream

Yesterday is but today's memory, and tomorrow is today's dream.
-Khalil Gibran 


What does it mean to have a dream?  What if you didn't have any?

I have been lucky enough to accomplish many of my dreams.  I have a career path, and a great job with great coworkers.  I have an enormous amount of education, and I have surrounded myself with good-hearted people.  Pretty lucky, I am!  =)

But luck did get me to where I am today, hard work did.  I worked hard for most things I have in my life, and made good use of opportunities presented to me.  I made my own luck, and circumstances often paid off for me.  I am goal-oriented, and darn it, I accomplish goals on a regular basis!  Go me!

But sometimes you can't help but wonder…what's next?  I'm an adult, I've made my way, now what?  Where's the checklist? *frantic searching*

It was with my grandfather's death that my perspective changed.  I thought of all the things my grandfather accomplished, and while I was sitting near his bedside, I contemplated that most of those things didn't happen while he was 'checking things off a list' or 'being goal-oriented.'  It wasn't his goal to meet Charles Schultz, and have him be a personal friend.  That just sort of 'happened' as he was living the life he wanted live, playing hockey and travelling through the States.  And, universally, most of the things that happen to us in life 'just sort of happen' and we don't plan them.  Scary thought for someone like me, who needed that road-map!

Sometimes we accomplish our dreams, our goals.  That can leave us feeling empty because we don't always have something to replace that dream with.  And what we don't realize is that we're not supposed to get a new goal or a new dream immediately.  We're supposed to live our life.  And the beauty of life is in living our dreams, not accomplishing them.  We should all hope to sustain a feeling of happiness in our day-to-day lives because 'getting somewhere' in life doesn't mean each destination is a rest stop to somewhere else.  It means that we go to a destination to be there. We have dreams so that we can live them, not so we can constantly searching for something else, something so-called better.

So live your dreams.  It's a dream worth having.



 

Time is precious

I have been thinking about a lot of things this week…when i get the chance, I might put them in writing.

I am taking a creative writing class, and I might post some of my pieces here.

On Tuesday, my grandfather died

A lot of my family posted on Facebook about my grandfather, photos, some of his humour and mannerisms, and there was an outpouring of public support from friends and family.  I couldn't really bring myself to read the comments, or even some of the things that my family members posted.  I was upset at the time...and being away from family doesn't make it easier....it makes it harder.  And I can't be there....because the airport in Toronto has shut down because of weather related problems.  I called my dad, my grandmother....they understand...but it doesn't make it easier.  I want so much to be with them, to give my dad a big hug, to sit with my grandmother when she cries, to give her my shoulder if it will help, to smile if it will ease the pain.

I have been very lucky to have grown up with not two, but three amazing parents who love me and want me to grow up to be an upstanding individual.  I have been born into a family of love, a family of people who are not drug addicts, gambling addicts, in jail, or otherwise fallen into the various social pits of society, never to escape.  I come from a family of winners.  I look forward to seeing our families succeed and support each other as we grow up into the future.  

I am now an adult; I am no longer blind to the weights that adults bear during difficult times.  Difficulties faced in happiness, in illness, in misunderstandings...in the passing of missed opportunities, of ones that are missed.  Now is one of those times. I miss my grandfather, because he was family, and I loved him.  I wish I had more words, more words that could be something, something that means something to me.

My dad and my grandmother displayed the kind of strength I hope one day I might have.  The strength to love when love is hard, the strength to persevere, especially when not all is right.  It is easy to be kind when life is easy.  It is not easy to be kind when life is cruel, and circumstances are final.  It is hard to believe in God, to love what is good and right and true when the people you love are constantly in a world where nothing seems good, right or true.  Where every light is but a little dimmer, squandered in the face of consequences of living, and being born to die again.  In those kind of days, happiness and goodness only come up for air to show that they still exist, not that they have come to stay for a season.  They only appear as a contrast to the difficult times ahead.  The difficult times faced by those who choose love.  To love and be loved.  To lose.  But to gain again, as the cycle of life continues.  And happiness can begin again. 


My grandfather and I share a name.  Both a family name and his first name.  I have always felt strongly connected to him as the grandchild to carry on his name, though he was a man of few words.  He and I rarely spoke, though we did spend time together....and if we did speak, unsurprisingly, it was me doing most of the talking. I was grateful....grateful for the time I was able to spend with him as a teenager, as a young adult.  I know that not everyone gets to know their family.  I know that my grandfather and I were very different...but I loved him all the same.  And I know he was surrounded by people who loved him as he passed.  And I am thankful to still have those amazing, caring people in my life.

TOW: Stages

Every life has stages.

When I was younger, I was lucky enough that I got to live the stages of my life the way I wanted.  I had both time and energy to do the things that interested me.  I got to have extracurriculars, I never worried about food, or about not having things kids should have at my stage of life.  In other words, I had everything.

Now, at 30, things are different.  My stages of life don't match other people's.  And none of us really are on the same 'path.'  Sometimes they just intersect.

It was easy in high school....in university.  You found people like you, and even if they weren't the same, they had similar ideals, you could talk about similar things, you could discuss 'ideas.'

As an adult, I am often too busy, and people are too preoccupied to discuss ideals and ideas.  We are swept away in practical concerns, often of the kind to make a better society, in our own little ways.  We are all working the adult work of creating a history in our lives that mean something. 

My life stage doesn't match the one that society puts forward for me.  I don't have a young family, I don't have a house, and I don't have anything to show for a 'legacy' that I am building.  In other words, I seem to either a) be in a special kind of life phase b) be stuck in a life phase that some people transitioned out of in their twenties. 

I know, though, is that there will be new marriages, births, deaths, divorces (unfortunately), and new families, growing out of new situations, new stages of life for new people.  Love and life, life and love.  And then again, these stages. 

I know you can't always get what you want in each stage of your life...but it's good, I think to enjoy what you have while you have it.