Is a dream a lie...
... if it don’t come true...
What happened to the dreams? What happened to all the things I would do? The girls I loved at a distance, the books, songs and poems I would write and be hallowed for, the places I would see, the people I would meet, the photographs I would take, the things I'd buy, all the things I would learn?
...or is it something worse?
No. An unfulfilled dream is just that. A life that never happened, a path not taken. It's said you can only regret what you haven't done, but that's not true. It's not too late. It's never too late. But the dreams might have to be adjusted, every once in a while.
The girl who never became my girlfriend became my friend, and I'm grateful for that.
The places I wanted to see are still there, and I can still visit them.
The books, the poems and songs - they're still in my head, but I've realised that I don't want to write to become rich and famous. I want to write because I love writing, and if someone should like what I've done I'm flattered and glad. That's all reward I need.
Everything I wanted to learn, I can still learn. But now I don't want to learn things in order to impress people, or to be the best. I just want to know, to be able to, because I'm interested.
Dreams are important, but they're not real. You can let them lie, and look back at them with the same wry smile you give your old childhood teddy bear. You can follow them, and do your best to make them come true, but you must realise when you can't pursue them any more, and be content with having done your best.
There is no shame in having unfulfilled dreams. But it is a shame to let them take over your life, to pursue them far beyond the point at which you should have realised and admitted that for every step you take they move even further away.
It would have been so good...
So? Apparently it isn't. Or rather, it isn't as you thought and hoped it would be. That doesn't mean it's a failure. There's always room for new dreams. And some do come true.
Forget about the dreams, for a moment. Put them aside, so they don't obscure the view. Look at where you are. It could have been so much worse. There's still room for dreams. New dreams, old dreams in a different shape. We never stop dreaming, but that's okay, as long as we remember we're supposed to have a life too. And even if things didn't go the way we hoped and dreamed, we do have a life.
Spring is in the air. There's a world of opportunity out there. And the life you have, don't see it as something that limits your old dreams, something that's holding you back, a ball and chan that prevents you from flying.
No, see it as a seed of new dreams.
[As is quite apparent, I wrote this to cheer me up. And it worked, for a while. When I went back to this text to translate it, I first thought "Man, that's pathetic! Did I really think that?" Then I realised that I still do.
The difference lies not in what I've written, but in what I was thinking about when I wrote it. But between then and now, I've cleaned out a lot of old dreams. Some of the ones I was still pursuing then are gone now, and I have some new ones. So the text remains true, but what it means to me has changed a lot.
Life is funny like that.]
Copyright 2004, 2006 Örjan Westin
First published on LunarStorm March 23rd 2004.