do you dream?

do you dream?

i can recall most of my childhood being one long continuous daydream. it was, well, dreaming was a way of escape for me, a source of comfort. my best friend really, it was my constant companion in a life of perpetual change. moving around a lot, the child of a military officer, we were on the road most years in between homes + communities. that alone caused turmoil + dysfunction in almost all of us never mind the catastrophe that was 'starting over'. somehow, somewhere along the way, i suppose as a way of coping with the losses, i turned to my imagination for consistencies + stability. looking back on it i feel it kinda left me emotionally stunted in some ways. all the imagining + moving. my head always seamed to be in the clouds living in a parallel universe. a concoction of my current reality + what i fantasized life to be. i mean i wasn't a total loser, i made friends easy enough and i also left them faster than you can write KIT. but my imagination + the daydreams of what could be + would be went with me. dreaming made leaving easier in a way. really i would imagine it to be because in a dream, most definitely you are creating the best of what is and what could be.

it would seem that's really what i was best at. so the story goes my parent's got tired of attending parent teacher conferences because they got tired of hearing the teachers quote the same phrase repeatedly. 'becky is very smart if she would only apply herself. she daydreams a lot.'

and so for a while, after i became fully emotionally aware how irritating my spaciness was to others, i stopped. the dreams faded and i found myself easily living in what is or was. i lost the ability to imagine. how awful a thing to forget.

in truth, i had convinced myself for many years since that my imagination had all but vanished, shut up shop, flown the coop.

through all our struggles in the journey to becoming parents i never imagined what life would be after it finally happened. there was enough imagination left in me to fight for the reality of them but anything to come after, well i had no idea. yuck, that's insanely depressing. for a child to belong to a parent and a parent a child, void of the nurturing well that is the ability to dream. how sad. it hasn't been until recently that i thought it time to let sleeping dogs lie. the past is what it is but the future, well the future is what we imagine it to be. isn't it? despite what you may think you are not stuck in some predetermined assignment. you do have a hand + say in the success of your life and it all begins as a daydream. an imagined thought or idea of what you could be, should be. should it remain a mere thought? no! heavens no, how insulting to you + your creator. think it, believe it, write it, speak it, work at it. then speak it and speak it again. speak it and work it until you've given life to that imagined thought + made you're daydreams reality. what then, is that time wasted?

over the past week i've given my imagination permission to work + i have to tell you i'm liking what it's doing to me. a daydreaming habit doesn't make you lazy or impractical. it breathes life into your soul. what if? some of the most frightening or exhilarating words to echo. what if? what if what you imagine is what should be? this week i dare you to not be so grown up and practical. i dare you to space out, daydream a bit. then make a dream board without limits it ill give you courage to dare attempt what your thoughts have conjured up.

'if you can visualize it, if you can dream it, there's some way to do it.'
-walt disney