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

Worth the dream

I’ve been sharing a lot—and will continue to share—about the sweetness of putting an old dream to bed. But I want to emphasize that I don’t regret this dream for one second. I don’t regret the thousands of hours I’ve put into my words, most of which will never be read; the agonizing years of waiting for a publisher’s response, of praying for that one “yes” that never came; the crushing disappointment of rejection after rejection, which used to floor me, literally, face down on the hardwood of my sister’s bedroom.

Why don’t I regret any of this? Because even if the only thing I got from all this effort was the ability to walk away with peace in my heart, then even just that is well worth all the trouble. And actually, counterintuitively, all that trouble was the exact reason I could walk away with peace in my heart.

The quickest way to let go of this dream was first to try everything possible to make it come true.

Only then was it a sincere release of attachment, rather than a fruitless attempt to dodge pain.

And even though this dream once gave me a lot of suffering, it also yielded many gifts. 

The most obvious is that I honed my writing skills and published minor works, and received direct feedback that these brought some joy and awareness to its readers. I also lent my skills to friends’ application essays, and helped win gigs or grants that they claim would otherwise have been lost. 

But the real gift was the strengthening of my diligence.

Only because of this once-cherished dream would I have volunteered so many years just… typing. Writing and rewriting and writing yet again. Getting every word and punctuation and plot device as close to perfect as possible. Submitting my work and my heart into the hands of unforgiving strangers, recovering like a Weeble Wobble after every rebuff, and throwing myself into yet another round of edits because, of course, any artwork can always be a wee bit better.

I gained absolute confidence that when I really care about something (my marriage, my practice), I’ll tend to it with the utmost, exquisite, unwavering care. 

This self-trust is now rock solid.

And if you, Reader Friend, have a dream too—if it’s a wholesome one, pursued with wholesome means—then I’m rooting for you. May your dream come true; and whether or not it eventually does, may we all awaken as you follow it.

“All skillful qualities are rooted in diligence and meet at diligence,
and diligence is said to be the best of them.”
—Gotama Buddha, Anguttara Nikaya 10.15