Dreams…

I am intrigued at how much changes and yet is the same. We have four seasons of change, but they repeat themselves. We fight wars; we make peace, and then we do it all over again. In the book When the Past is Present: Healing the Emotional Wounds that Sabotage our Relationships, which is by David Richo, life is described as a spiral. We are either spiraling down, spiraling up, or circling the drain. We relive past experiences in current ones to try to fix what we could not in the last. Sometimes we just repeat, never seeing the pattern or perhaps ignoring it. In other cases, we may see but can spend a whole life-time trying to change.

I am about to embark on a travel adventure to see if a different environment can help me gain perspective. People can get so caught up in the routines of life that they are oblivious as they circle the  drain or spiral down. The routine allows for a numbing of the conscience that does not require much thought or self-reflection. I was so stuck in a life of “what I should be doing” instead of really living. But it is never too late to follow childhood dreams.

When I was little, I used to tell my parents I was going to be a traveling missionary and ride a donkey around the world. Although the dream has transformed as I have, it is still there. Today, it takes the shape of living a minimalist existence while exchanging life’s lessons with strangers, using nursing skills to help other’s find beauty in suffering, and sharing what I have learned through writing. Life is too short not to follow my dream, not the medias’, not my families’ or friends’, and not even “the dream” that comes from my own expectations of self and society, but my own dream, without expectations and knowing that it is mine.