Kaufman Updates
Permanent link for New Year with No Dreams, by Cecelia Olson, Kaufman Campus Intern on January 22, 2024
Dreams are overrated.
I understand that sounds a bit bleak, especially with this new year and our collective societal obsessions with goals and new beginnings. But recently I have learned I am not a dreamer. Plain and simple. When I tell this to people they seem a bit confused and then there is a following response along the lines of “well don’t say that”. I appreciate the etiquette but I am actually very content with not having big dreams or deeply specific goals for my life. Again, bleak.
One of my dear friends is a chronic dreamer. Everyday he wakes up
with a mentality that he can be or do whatever he wants with his day,
his life. This is how most of us wake up I imagine, with at least a
little bit of autonomy and hope but probably a larger chunk of
responsibility than he had. Regardless, most of us might take this
autonomy and freedom to dream to the extent that we can change up our
morning routine, maybe wear jeans to work instead of slacks – screw
it, even get fast food for dinner.
My friend dreamt he could wake up and be a cowboy in Montana, climb
his way up to the top of a corporate ladder, go into carpentry, be an
inventor of the next big
revolutionary piece of furniture, join
the military, move to Alaska or Hawaii, be an expert sailor. Perhaps
his biggest dream was traveling the world and getting to come back
home to a perfect little house on top of a hill.
I recently heard someone else say they feel like their dreams are
obligations to accomplish, some type of self achievement checklist
that allows them to believe they
have lived a life that was
meaningful and purposeful.
I wonder if it was the weight of all these dreams that made him feel a bit trapped in his life.
For myself, with the exception of perhaps having a beautiful clawfoot bathtub one day, there are not many things I actively desire and deeply want for my life. At least not in the same respect as my friend. I don’t have dreams. No big bucket list I am anxious about completing. My dreamlessness was made very clear after many conversations and secretive comparisons between myself and my friend. See, it’s not that I don’t have any ambition or motivation for my life. However I am not convinced I am the one who propels most of what happens within it. They say the Christian life is one of intense cooperation with God, but it is impossible to reach out and join hands with God when they are tightly clinging to our self created dreams and expectations. The wonderful Henri Nouwen, a Catholic priest and writer, puts it a bit more succinctly in his work Turn my Mourning into Dancing where he writes:
“When we stop grasping our lives, we can finally be given more than we could ever grab for ourselves”.
It was a bit confusing to find this quote that so clearly articulates what I have slowly been realizing in a book revolving around embracing and struggling with grief, but I think now it makes sense. When I asked my dreamer friend if he had any New Year’s resolutions, he shrugged and said, “oh, just the same ones I write down every year.”
How many of us are grasping so tightly onto wild dreams and old resolutions just so we can avoid the grief of reality when our lives might not look the way we want them to? Aren’t we all a bit desperate to avoid the reality that we actually have much less control over our lives, and especially over other people’s lives, than we think we do?
If you’ve read some of my previous blog posts, you’ll know I am a
practicing Eastern Orthodox Christian. Personally, I am a big believer
in God’s will. No, not the pop culture definitions that use God’s will
as a scapegoat or the one where I think that whatever I do in my life
doesn’t matter, none of that. I believe in the Will where I am
invited to intensely cooperate with God.
I believe God’s Will is to love my neighbor and my enemy. My only responsibility is to build and embrace a heart where this love can live itself out. How exactly that looks is not for me to dream up. When I look back at the past year I see that my life has been full of more maturity, friendships, struggle, forgiveness, endurance, accomplishments, learning, direction, and joy than I could have ever dreamt for myself. I trust God with my desire to have a fulfilling and loving life, and I trust Him to figure out the details of how it all plays out.
Perhaps my friend gripped his dreams so tightly because he didn’t
have a trustworthy place to set them down, a place where there are no
crushing expectations or the lie that we can earn love and purpose and
worth. I find all this is Christ. See, I don’t have any real desire
for dreams because I’ve learned I’m not in
control, or even
possession of my life anyways.
My life was given to me to be given to others.
I am by no means a saint and fail at this countless times, but I do my best to give away my life –that is my effort, thought, heart, hope, friendship, service, talents– to whatever and whoever has been given to me. We grasp things desperately - stability, hope, dreams - when we are afraid of what will happen when we let go. Perhaps we think we’ll be letting go of purpose, success, fame, confidence, predictability, hope, or even love. Of course we cling to dreams. But like Nouwen alluded to, when we come to life, when I come to God, with open hands, an open heart, and the intention of giving what was given we can receive much more than what we clung to in the first place.
With all integrity I do not mean this post as a guilt trip. I admire deeply how much hope my dreamer friend could cultivate within his life and use it to inspire others. By all means, go travel the world, be a cowboy in Montana, create that piece of furniture, please get to that lovely house on top of the hill, write down the same old resolutions. But I hope you aren’t clinging to those things thinking they will help you avoid the grief of reality and the unknown. Embrace everything that happens and everything that didn’t but, don’t get stuck there. I’ll end with a quote from an Orthodox Christian saint, St.Gregory Nazianzen:
“Do not let your troubles distress you too much. For the less we grieve over things, the less grievous they are.”
Cheers to a New Year full of gratitude and embracement and courage, a year of relief instead of grief!
Cecelia Olson
