Dreams are everywhere, in successful and failed companies, in happy marriages or crumbling ones, in thriving careers and celebrity rehab. Once upon a time each dream was fresh, bright and had so much promise; little specks of hope, creativity and great ideas all rolled into one.
Then expectations begin to creep in, those small, seemingly harmless little seeds including: when, who, where, why and how — just like the game of Clue. As they show up you find yourself weighing the expectations against the dream, trying to tie all the details into a neatly formed package ready to ship at Christmas. And sometimes, when all those little seeds start to add up they begin to sabotage your big vision or dream, making you doubt yourself and your plans.
Expectations and the Human Condition
Its only human to have expectations. As a combination of family values, life exploration and community and social obligations, these experiences shape life and what you have come to expect from it. This smorgasbord of interactions, big and small helped you form powerful ideas about exactly HOW something should be shaping up or working out in your life.
Sometimes, these expectations can begin to kill your dream one seed at a time, as they force you to keep rethinking the details, needing something to happen at a certain time and in a certain way. This riddles your beloved dreams with bullet holes of second guesses and frustrations.
When our desire for a specific outcome is tied to a time, place, person or thing (pieces), life becomes a bit more tricky and confusing. We might be misled into thinking something is the right path towards our dream because we are so attached to the pieces in front of us, and the expectations we have for those pieces. It’s our attachment to those pieces coming with us in a very specific way that may influence us to overlook the fact they don’t fit the true dream at all. In fact are distracting us from it altogether.
We might even miss an opportunity to get closer to our true dream because it doesn’t look, smell or feel similar to the expectations we have so long marinated over in our minds and souls.
Keeping an Open Mind About Dreams Big and Small
Now is the time to review what your dreams mean to you. Do you have new ones? Are there old ones languishing that need tending? Are you regretful about a dream that has died and want to think of a way to resurrect it? Can you identify some expectations that may be keeping you from following a specific, long-held dream? You owe it to yourself as we close out one year and begin the next to give your dreams the love they need and deserve.
Dreams should be left just as they were when they were created, as little pieces of juicy, crazy love and creativity that are hopeful, open-ended, passionate and uplifting. So do yourself a favor and love the dream for what it is, your lovely, perfect creation.
Painting by Nadia Minic, Light of a dream or hope for a new love