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.