Not dreams, but direction
I no longer find it useful to cling onto dreams.
But I still have plenty of direction in life.
I’d like to pay off all my student loans. Move to a cabin in the woods. And most of all, I’m not enlightened yet, and I’m determined to get there whether in this lifetime or a million more.
There’s a difference between “chasing dreams” and “having direction.”
Both are attempts to cultivate a better life. But when I obsess over a dream, I can never relax into the present moment. I can’t fully rest or be happy. Such obsessions carry the same energy as that carnival phenomenon where you don a Velcro onesie, sprint down a runway, and then hurl yourself upon a fuzzy wall—thunk—except it never stops, you peel yourself off and go again ad nauseum, finding some thrill in the quick dash, the sudden stop, the distinct possibility of breaking your neck.
These days, I’m practicing how to hold direction with patience.
I know where I’d like to go. So I build a plan toward that end, then lean sweetly into life as it unfolds. I’m hacking away at that debt every month. When it’s done, I’ll start building savings for an eventual move. Meanwhile I practice every day to live blamelessly and at ease. And I tend the backyard broccoli patch, scratch the dog behind her ears, and play Wordle with my partner over our morning tea. To extend the carnival analogy, this is the ride where you and your favorite person settle into a ski lift together and glide slowly over the whole park, admiring the sunset and chuckling at the chaos far below. The “sky ride,” I think it’s called.
Doesn’t that sound nice?
When it’s time to plan, I’ll plan.
When it’s time to go or work or speak or do, I’ll go and work and speak and do.
But otherwise, I intend to do not very much at all.
Again—doesn’t that sound nice?
“When energy is too forceful it leads to restlessness.
When energy is too slack it leads to laziness…
Find a balance of the faculties and learn the pattern of this situation.”
—Gotama Buddha, Anguttara Nikaya 6.55