Dear Reader, I almost didn't write this article.

At the time I posted the title on my website, I knew that it was important to talk about, but I put off writing on this topic for other tasks. Now that it’s time to write it, I wasn’t sure I believed 100%. So, by the end of our time together, I will have hopefully convinced you, and myself again, that dreaming is worth another chance. 

So how do you tell someone else that their dream matters when you're trying to convince yourself that yours still does? Am I delusional? *shrugs* Maybe. But that’s for me and my therapist to decide. However, I will use a helping spoonful of delusion to help me do it. And maybe that's the point. Maybe this isn't an article about teaching you how to dream. Maybe it's an open letter from someone learning how to dream again.

When I think about dreams, I usually think about children. We tell kids they can be anything they want! Astronauts, doctors, presidents, artists, and everything in between (except a YouTuber. That’s the equivalent of a 90’s kid’s dream of becoming a rapper). Dreaming for them is just as natural as breathing air. Somewhere along the way, though, I would say around middle school since I spent most of my career with those angels, that we stop asking kids what they want to become and start asking them what they're going to do.

Those are not the same question though. One invites possibility and the other demands practicality.

I used to dream about becoming an anesthesiologist. I volunteered at what used to be Wadley Hospital where my mom worked most of my life. More than 600 hours over three summers walking the same halls with these life savers and changers. Taking detours to see Mr. Womack, who was a nurse anesthetist and my twin classmates’ dad. I saw exactly where I would be and he was a physical manifestation of that. I felt like the road to my dream was perfectly laid out. Then organic chemistry happened.

If you've ever met little miss organic chemistry, you probably have battle scars from that terror. And I’m talking, ‘you better learn it yourself University level organic chem’, not the ‘helpful and patient community college organic chem’. There’s a major difference. That class has probably redirected more career paths than most guidance counselors.

But looking back, I don't think organic chemistry killed my dream. It simply introduced me to something every adult eventually meets.

Reality.

Reality starts asking questions that dreams never had to answer. How much does it pay? How much debt will you have? What if you fail? What if you're too late? What if someone else is better? What if you don’t finish at the same time as your friends?

Then those questions don't just stay in college. They follow us into adulthood.

I remember being a kid in the backseat of my grandparents’ baby blue cadillac with all the bells and whistles. The same one where I burned my finger on the cigarette lighter and silently cried because I was warned on multiple occasions that it would burn me. That is called a bought lesson. But in that backseat, head against the blistering untinted glass, we drove past beautiful homes sitting on acres of land. Huge homes with a mothers cottage, long winding driveway and everything. I never looked at those houses and thought about property taxes or homeowners insurance. I didn't think about commute times or mortgage rates or whether people in that neighborhood would welcome someone who looked like me.

I just thought...

One day.

But my imagination turned into calculation. I don't think that's because we become less hopeful. I think we become really, really good at surviving.

Money teaches us to calculate.

School teaches us to be practical.

Home and work teaches us to manage risk.

None of those things are bad. But eventually we become so good at calculating reality that we forget how to imagine a different one.

Our dreams rarely disappear overnight. They just chip away little by little until we stop dreaming altogether. And its understandable because we have to prioritize what next steps we must take to keep a roof over our head, take care of the kids,  conserve our energy or whatever dopamine hit we can get just to keep us going. 

People love vision board parties but I’ve never really understood why. Don't get me wrong. They're fun for many. But the dreaming part isn't hard. The Tuesday after the vision board is. The Thursday six months later is. The accountability is.

Writing the vision and making it plain is one thing. Living like you believe it's possible is something entirely different. The older I get, the more I realize that hope and dreams are not the same thing.

A dream is where you want to go. Hope is what keeps you moving when you can't see how you'll get there. It’s not knowing A to Z, it’s knowing A, B and Z. A is the reality of where you are right now, the beautiful truth. B is the next step that you know you should take and Z is where you ultimately want to be. The rest of the alphabet isn’t today’s concern. B is. So if you don’t have someone who has walked your path on the way to where you’re going, you are that person for someone else. Be what Shonda Rhimes calls a FOD. First. Only. Different. 

One of the many problems we have that’s missing in the ingredient list to make a dream is hope. We put our hope in things that were never meant to carry it. If my hope is in an employer, my dream dies when I get rejected. If my hope is only in myself, it dies the moment I fail. If my hope depends on perfect circumstances, then a recession, a layoff, an illness, or a bad year can convince me that my dream was never possible in the first place. Hope has to be rooted deeper than that.

A few months ago, I wasn't building toward a dream. I was surviving. Like real deal surviving. Like family and friends checking on me every few hours surviving. Then it turned into grieving. Then recovering. So now I’m building again. Those weren't separate seasons. They were all part of the same one.

I'm 31 years old. If I'm fortunate enough to live to be 100, that's 69 more years. LAWDY! Can I honestly say I'm okay spending the next 69 years simply existing?

Absolutely not. That is depressing. But it’s also clarifying. It reminds me that I still have time. Time to take another swing. Time to plant another seed. Time to become the person I'm still capable of becoming.

Maybe that's what dreaming actually is. Not trying to become the person you imagined at 6 or even 18. But taking everything life has taught you, every disappointment, every rejection, every unexpected detour, every lesson, every Easter egg you've picked up along the way, and asking one simple question.

Knowing what I know now… what kind of life do I actually want to build?

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. didn't just have a dream. He had hope that the dream was worth pursuing. Hope gave his dream somewhere to grow. Maybe ours works the same way.

So if you're reading this wondering whether your dream still matters, I hope you know you're not reading this from someone who has it all figured out. You're reading it from someone who's remembering. Someone who's planting a seed that sat on the shelf for a while. Someone who's choosing to believe that dreams don't disappear because they were impossible.

Sometimes they just get buried beneath responsibility, disappointment, and survival. And that's okay. Seeds were never meant to stay on shelves. They were meant to be planted.

So maybe this week isn't about dreaming bigger. Maybe it's about planting something. Anything. Because the life you've been hoping for won't grow from a vision board. It won't grow if you're still asleep at the wheel of your own life. It'll grow from the first small act that tells your dream, "I'm awake and I'm ready to believe in you again."