Big Dreams

Several years back I was on a roadtrip with my sisters and bunch of random friends. Our car had a conversation on the way home that has continued to fascinate me, in a disturbing kind of way. Sarah told the car that one day she realized that she no longer has dreams. Not sleeping kind of dreams, but the wishful kind. The kind that you have as a little kid when you've got your whole life still stretching out in front of you, and your teachers are telling you that you can do anything, be anything, and accomplish anything you really want. You're too naive to question "well then why are you teaching elementary school? Was that really your biggest aspiration in life?" I'm skeptical, but who knows, maybe it was. I once tried to disillusion my youngest brother. The conversation went something like this:

Neal: When I grow up I'm going to play football for BYU.

Me: Really? What position are you going to play?

Neal: Offensive lineman.

Me: Interesting. Do you think you're going to be big enough?

Neal: Sure. I eat as much as I can so that I'll get bigger.

Me: Ralph, you know how your teacher at school tells you that you can grow up to be anything you want?

Neal: Yes!

Me: She lied.

Our Mother: JULIE! Why would you try and discourage him? He's only 5. Neal, don't pay any attention to your sister.

My defense was that sooner or later he was going to realize that he lacked the size to play on the o-line, and he might as well let that little dream be shattered now, so that he'd still have time to set his heart on something more realistic. My mom didn't buy it.

I'm quite certain that Neal now knows he'll never be a lineman. In fact, it's been years since I've heard him talk about playing football for BYU. My suspicion is that at 14, reality has already snuck in and stolen his dreams, and now it makes me kind of sad to say that.

I've started to wonder what it is that makes some people extraordinary. It has to be because they dreamed, but is it that they never stopped to evaluate their dreams to determine how realistic they were, did they just want what they dreamed more than the rest of us, or did they dream bigger than the rest of us in the first place? I've decided that it must be a combination of all three. I for one did not dream big, and most of my small dreams were lost early on, because I believed them to be unrealistic, and a waste of my time and energies. I'm pretty ordinary, and I, like most of us, live a life of obscurity.

On the bright side I'm still pretty young, and I have my health, so I've had this idea rattling around in my head for a while that what if, I could figure out a way to build new dreams, to replace the ones I've lost, only this time dream big, and not bother myself with being realistic, and really set my heart on them. Maybe my life would wind up totally different, but since I'm sitting here trying to figure out how realistic that is...