2. Life's Dreams, Life's Faith

 

• The Dream and the Importance of the Dream
  9-24-22
  
  During this second week of learning, I've done a lot of pondering and reflecting about what I want to accomplish in my life - as prompted by the study material: creating a life of meaning, and making a bucket-list of things I want to accomplish in life. These exercises have been both inspiring and intimidating.
  About Randy Pausch and how he as able to achieve so many of his childhood dreams, I think one of the main drivers was his determination to not take no for an answer. He considered the time, the costs, the obstacles, and faced them. He didn't give up, and he kept learning everything he needed to know in order to make the dream a reality. He didn't expect the opportunity to just show up on a silver platter in front of him. Rather, he was proactive and worked hard to make it happen. He was also able to achieve his dreams because his dream stayed the same: he didn't give up on the dream or discount it as being silly or unrealistic.
  I do feel that dreaming is important, though not to the extent of living in a perpetual fantasy or dreaming up things that are destructive or ultimately distracting. However, we dream because we have the capacity to dream, and that is a tremendous gift of faith that God has given us. If I did not dream, I would not be motivated to do anything worthwhile, nor even to consider what I do as worthwhile. Life would be a waste, either wasting away in idleness or cast away in frivolity and unhinged self-indulgence, seeking only after the next high, the next fix, the next thrill of short-lived excitement. There is a time for thrills and excitements, but not as a goal of life. When we dream, we grow. We move beyond our present circumstance and capacities. I would like to think of it less like dreaming, but more like faith and hope. Is it important to have faith? Why is faith important? Because faith (a dream) gives us the power to act and to move, to progress and to grow. Faith sees beyond the present moment. Faith and hope are that golden thread that connect us to eternity, and draw us up to meet it. Whether the goal is as broad as maintaining the eternal perspective and considering the end of one's own creation, or if it is as specific as planning out the next few things to do today, faith is the principle of action and power that makes it happen.
  One of my childhood dreams was to ride running dragons across an untamed and unexplored wilderness. That, I later discovered, was a dream that would stay in the dreamworld, since dragons don't exist in the real world. Though I couldn't ride real dragons, I could make the dreamworld into an actual story. If I am dead serious about it, this fantasy world could end up as a videogame to experience in Virtual Reality. Is it worthy of pursuing? I'm still figuring that one out. But as inspired by Randy Pausch, I know that if I really want to make it happen, I can make it happen, and I could also find a way to make it pay the bills.
  Another childhood dream was to be a famous performer on Broadway. This is not necessarily a dream I am willing to pursue because it comes at a cost I am not willing to pay, or I would have to give up on better dreams in order to get to this one. The internal culture, environment and negative spiritual affects are not something that I want to be a part of. As a career, it is unstable and many situations are morally compromising. I still enjoy singing, acting and dancing, though I will do so in other capacities, and more as hobbies than as a career.
  Another dream was to be an artist, and I am pursuing that dream. I am also expanding upon the initial spark of inspiration to include more ways I can be a creator, and do so in a way that allows more of my other dreams to flourish, and which is able to support a family financially. There is always some give and take. Many times along my path, the voice of the Spirit has quietly asked me, "Lovest thou me more than these?" and I had to choose and make sacrifices, choosing which pursuits in life to hold onto and which to let go of. Jesus Christ and His goal is one He wishes me to take part in, and I want that too, to become like Him. There is still that one dream above them all which will bring all the other duckling dreams in a row behind it.