“How you gonna make a dream come true?”

March 16, 2013 at 3:50 am · Filed under Hope, Independence, Steps and tagged: change, dreams, goals, growing, identity, journey, passivity, powerlessness, self, wisdom

I don’t seem to know the answer … my dreams have not come true.

My dreams never became goals, let alone realities or accomplishments, because I was always stopped from pursuing my interests.

(Did you notice the passive voice there?  My word processing program did.  “Passive what?” you ask.  “I was always stopped.”  I didn’t perform the stopping – someone else did.

(Active voice challenges me to write, “X stopped me from pursuing my interests.”  Guess I must determine X.)

Who stopped me?  At first, it was my own mother, whose home-bound inertia set the tone for me to imitate.  All her active encouragement went to a sibling and sibling’s activities, while she decreed that I had to stay home to prevent intruders.  Hence, by high school, I no longer joined clubs or sports or made friends or social plans.  Alone I sat, doing schoolwork, viewing life in books or on TV.  Bored, silent, and encapsulated, I waited for my 18th birthday when I could and would leave and live.

Eighteen came, and I left.  I felt no passion to direct me, knew no personally defined major, career, or lifestyle, just the numb need to leave.  After a few years of college, drifting from major to minor, elective to elective, room to house, boyfriend to live-in, I married and helped him pursue his dreams.

(Slightly more active voice here challenges me to recognize, “I stopped myself from pursuing my interests.”)

Passively fast-forward two decades: a career by default, Oooda by blessing (subsequently, helping her pursue her goals), a divorce by alcoholism, and …

I completely lost my identity.  For a time, I felt as invisible as the wind, as bland as white bread, as shapeless as water taking on whatever boundaries its container sets, with goals as blurred as a foggy light at the dim end of a long, winding tunnel.  (Yes, the mixed-up, rambling metaphors tell a tale, hear?)

Now, I am not quite so infinitely adrift.  I’ve made some conscious choices: leaving my career-by-default (untimely so, but I had no recession-heralding crystal ball) and taking part-time jobs in diverse fields; not performing some chores just because I don’t want to and learning new skills just because I do want to; not contacting some people because they drain me and calling other people because they energize me.

I’m beginning to listen when my inner voice protests that something bores me, to depart when I feel my gut tighten because something displeases me, to lose my awareness of time when an endeavor captivates me, and to savor my heart’s song when my achievement fulfills me.

I’m starting to think of fun as equally important to responsibility in the grand scheme of life.

I’m changing my mantra from what I do to what I enjoy, when meeting people for the first time.

Still, where does this all go?  Where do I want this to go?

“You got to  have a dream … If you don’t have a dream, how you gon-na make a dream come true?”  (“Happy Talk,” South Pacific).

I want to synthesize these new insights into a cohesive, coherent direction, a career ambition, a planned-for vacation.  I want my life to be more deliberate.

It is up to me:

What’s my Goal?

What Plan of Action will I work to achieve it?

What will my progress look like?

When will I evaluate my Plan of Action?

If my Plan of Action is working, what will I do then?

If my Plan of Action is not working, what change will I make?

Perhaps the I so many times sounds selfish.  For now, I accept that on the way to identifying my dream and then working its metamorphosis into a goal.

This is a portion of the journey of the Steps:

8.  I am making a list of all goals I have abandoned and commit anew to pursuing the ones most valuable.

11.  I seek through prayer and reading to improve my conscious contact with God, praying for knowledge of God’s will for my goals and the power to carry them out.

12.  Seeing a path toward personal awakening of joyful self, healthy boundaries, and compassionate purpose, I share this journey with other parents of ODD and/or DA and ask their support in grateful community.

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