I have had a recent fascination for the song, “I Dreamed a Dream,” from the musical Les Miserable. The song tells of the frustration of dreams not coming true and is sung by a character who will die shortly after the song is finished. The last line of the song is “Now life has killed the dream I dreamed.”
The song is haunting and hard to get out of your head once you’ve heard it, and it feels so true. There is also a line from the play “You Can’t Take it With You” that asks, “All those dreams we had when we were young, what happened to them?” Life can kill the dreams we dream, but the problem isn’t so much life, as us. Our life circumstances may ultimately kill our dreams, but we don’t take the time to nourish them and work on them and allow them to flourish. Life may kill the dreams, but we put them on life support on our own.
I have been feeling, since I turned 50, that life had little left to offer. That anything I once wanted was impossible now. I have thought over and over again that dreams only come true when we are young, they can’t happen any more for me. I have also spent a lot of time blaming other people for these problems, people that may have had influence, but never had the power to actually stop me. The only person who stopped me was me.
Now I stand at another cross road. I stand at a place where I could throw in the towel and believe that I can never be fulfilled or happy, or choose to fight and achieve the life that I know I want and I believe God wants for me. The hard thing about choices is that when we think we have two, we really have three. We can you choose one direction or the other or we can choose to do nothing. Choosing to do nothing has never been a good course in fact it may well be the course of the coward.
I chose to start this battle to lose weight over a month ago. After I made that choice I chose to ask about writing this column, and then began this journey with you at my side. One dream is being pursued. There are others as well.
I dream of one day having a full-time career in work where my creative energy flows. I dream of no longer being single. I dream of having children, or if that is no longer possible, than at least to have the ability to help shape young lives so that they can go after what they dream about. I dream of having friends that are really around and being in relationships that are dynamic and full of adventure. I dream of working with people that are so committed to goals that we work and think as one, being guided by ideals that are higher than our own. I have been saying lately, that “life killed the dreams I dreamed,” but that is not so. They are not dead, as they are alive in my heart. They are however on life support.
Walt Disney said, “All dreams can come true if we have the courage to pursue them.” He was and is right. Today I will begin to take my dreams off life support and feed them healthy food and do the work that will make them come back to full health. I will work toward them coming true, even, if at times, it seems that the work will take forever. Even if only one or two happen, when I finally close my eyes and rest for the last time, I will have no regrets. I would rather die knowing that I lived a life working to fulfill my dreams, than live my life watching as each of the dreams I have had are buried. I refuse to allow my dreams to die.