Waking Up

It starts with a dream. An idea. Something that may seem unrealistic, impractical, improbable. You convince yourself to stop fantasizing, to stay grounded, and to start thinking about all your responsibilities and obligations. That’s usually enough to kill it.

You begrudgingly resign yourself to your daily routine, working day in and day out for someone else, realizing their dreams, and forgetting about yours.
Your days blend in to your nights as your status as disgruntled employee becomes even more deeply etched into your personal storybook. Life becomes duller, as though someone had been playing with Universe.jpg on Photoshop and muted all the colors. You find yourself paying less and less attention to the color of the sky at dusk (you’re probably sitting in a cold cubicle at that time anyway), to the way that tree in front of your house seems to reach up towards the sky, and to the effect your disengagement from life has on your loved ones.

Over time, questions form in your mind about why and how. Every now and then you entertain the idea that you may be shortselling yourself. Maybe your priorities need to be carefully inspected. Maybe your happiness DOES matter, and maybe it deserves a second chance.

Then one day you wake up and you’re almost blinded by brightness and clarity. You wonder whether it’s too late to reverse the effects of your complacency, whether you can rewrite your history. You quickly realize it’s not necessary. Today you need not be who you were yesterday. The world comes into focus, you let go of your inhibitions, and you feel that familiar fire ignite and burn deliciously inside your soul. A smile inhabits your face and you quickly remember what it was like to dream. This time, you decide to remember your dreams.

And then you start the work of turning them into your reality.

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