A Dream a Day Keeps the Dreamer Awake

“Dreams are necessary to life.” “We want to make dreams come true.” “Dreams will come true if you just believe.” “Our dreams can come true if we have courage to pursue them.”

            How many more quotes must I read before I finally feel good about myself, before the theme “dreams come true” gets etched into my brain for all eternity? How many more before I’m stuck with this so-called perfection, a cage so tight that it’s impossible to escape?

            I often find myself musing over this question.

            One has to be careful if one wants to live life joyfully. Is that not right? It has to be. Nobody likes pain or hurt, nobody likes suffering. Dreamers are idealists in every sense of the word, and they make up these perfect visions of what they want, often losing sleep over it.

            I know that what I’m saying is true, or else I couldn’t call myself a dreamer. Yet I often want to stop the dreaming, the ambition, the mind-set goals. What is the point if I can never achieve any of them?

            In my mind, I can have the perfect romantic scene with somebody I truly love, set in a specific place, with a specific song playing in the background. Or I could be working my dream job, smiling at coworkers as we all merrily get along.

            No.

            I must take all of those dreams and toss them aside before they hurt me, before they don’t come true. Dreams can be sought after, crafted to its greatest peak as Gatsby once did to Daisy… But is that dream really real when it’s already been imagined in somebody’s mind?

            Nobody can tell the future. Dreams are not the future. They’re simply what the dreamer wants the future to be, but there has not been a single time where the dream has come true the way the dreamer wanted it.

            Perhaps it’s worse. Perhaps it’s better.

            I can’t ever say.

            But dreams haunt everybody. They give people a reason to strive forward and a reason to fall.

            Is it fair that they have so much potential, yet they can be the cause for the greatest hurt?

            Are dreams worth staying up all night? And, are they worth crying over?

            Because there is a single truth that can be meshed up from all of this, and that is that dreams are not real.

Effortless

They view their job as asking, and they view my job as giving answers.

            Sometimes I want to shout. I am not superman. I am not an octopus. I do not have supernatural powers. I do not have eight arms. I am merely a human being. Just like them.

            But they… those arrogant, ungrateful, blood sucking… They drain me of my time and do not pause to thank me. They take away my knowledge and do not turn back to give me something in return.

            I am just like them. Just like them! It takes effort, just as it would them.

            Is it fair that I should set aside a good storybook to analyze a math equation for my sister? Is it fair that I should set aside my homework to lend my skill with words to my brother? Is it fair that I should set aside my writing to listen to my friends complain about useless topics?

            No. Not when they expect it every second of every day.

            There are times when I feel used. I know it is not true. How could it be? I let myself be used, and, therefore, it is of my free will. I give them my uses for nothing in return, for nothing but empty promises.

            What I hate is that I know it, yet I cannot do anything about it. What I hate is that they don’t know it, and so they are oblivious to my hidden thoughts. What I hate is that I don’t have the courage to tell them that it’s my turn, my turn to get what I want.

            I have to only speak up. I wish so many things, that I can speak up, but something catches in my throat when I’m about to. Something… Something stops me from standing in the spotlight, bars my way so rudely.

            And I know what it is. It is me.

            I am a giver.

            If only a giver weren’t so afraid to receive. 

Stories and the Human Race

There are people. There are backgrounds. There are personalities.

            This is life.

            It could mean missed chances, but it could also mean new chances opened up: new environments and new people and, well, new stories.

            The what if’s that correspond with life are an aggravation on their own. I am constantly bombarded with strange visions of what my life could have been had I, say, never gone to a Chinese school. Or I’m wondering what my life could have been if my hair had never been pulled harshly by a girl in my class. Or I’m thinking up possibilities with guys who once flirted with me before I closed up because I didn’t want anyone to know if I liked them.

            And now I’m stuck.

            I’m stuck in mud and I don’t know how to escape. Perhaps if I had taken a different route, I would have reached the illusory imaginings I once dreamed of having, that peaceful and calm lake, surrounded by a canopy of trees where life is perfect.

            Maybe, even, I would be at the mall with a bunch of girls I admired from far away, buying makeup, buying clothes, buying shoes, and simply enjoying life, no worries, no pains. Carpe diem.

            But I didn’t do that. Instead, I took a pathway that intrigued me a bit, mostly because it was the easiest to take at the time. When I attended a Chinese school, it had not been my desire to go, but that of my parents. When that girl pulled my hair at age seven, I had no desire to go through that again. When that boy flirted with me on vacation, the desire to even think about going out with him hadn’t even entered my mind.

            So it was the timing, it was the parents, it was the fear. The stories and the events piled on top of each other, overflowed to push me forward, to push me to where I am now.

            I know now that it’s not only me, however. It is everyone else. You.

            Parents, the beings who brought you into the world, can set you at the entrance of that great forest. Friends, those people you run into along the way, can influence you in the direction you choose to go. Decisions, the path you decide to set foot on, can last for a lifetime.

            So yes. It is not only me.

            I am but one of the many travelers of the world. Sometimes, I come into contact with another. At other times, I am cooped up by myself with nothing but my words and a piece of paper.

            There is no point in dwelling in what could have been, no point in reminiscing about past opportunities.

            The old saying is true in every sense: when one door closes, a window opens.

            It is by this belief that I know, no matter who I am in ten years, or fifteen years, or thirty years, that I will never be lost.

            And neither will you.