Dream A Little Dream; Human Perversity

Posted on March 2, 2010 by DeBorah Beatty

Human beings are perverse critters. Only when they can find something wrong with an ideal can they claim it.

Here’s how it works: Think of a car you want to own. Sit quiet, mentally see yourself in the car, stretch your hands out and imagine how it will feel to grasp the steering wheel. Can you do it? Can you really really feel the car around you, smell the interior or feel the breeze from the air conditioner? Well, sort of.

Now, take yourself down to the dealership that sells those things. Go sit in the one you’ve been dreaming of. Now take a deep breath, smell the interior? Reach out your hands, grasp the steering wheel. How does it feel? Spongy?, hard, padded? How does your hind end feel in the seat? Your lower back?

Now that you know that, here’s the fun part.  What is wrong with the car? Are the drink holders in the wrong place for you? Hard to change the radio? Seat belts not where they should be for your comfort?

You see, it’s one of the perverse attributes of a human being that as long as something appears perfect and unattainable, all we can do is dream about it. Once we start finding things wrong with the thing we’ve dreamed of and longed for, it becomes much more real and reachable. It’s almost like we only feel like we can’t have something perfect. This bears further study and I’ll report back as I figure things out.

The same thing applies to a dream house. How many of us have an image in our mind of what we want, yet in our mind is where it stays. One of my clients is in search of the perfect home. She’s now on her fourth realtor and has driving the other three to distraction because none of the hundreds of homes they’ve shown her is right. There’s always something missing for her. She’s even purchased four homes over the years and sold them after living in them because the hold that the dream house has over her is so strong instead of just enjoying the homes she has.

You’d think, using my system, she’d have had 40 or 50 by now, but no, holding on so tightly to what is not attainable she’s missing out on all she could be enjoying.

Dreams are there to draw us forward, to strive towards a goal or make it through a challenge. We create them freely and often out of our dissatisfaction with what is and instead of changing what we can in the here and now, we put up and shut up and wait for someday.

But there is no someday. All we have is now. How many times have you seen people who spent their whole lives planning for that day when everything would be perfect and died before they could enjoy it? I sure don’t want to be one of those people and I’m sure you don’t either.

Live in the now. Create a vision. Live into that vision. Make it do-able, liveable, attainable and above all, enjoyable.

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You may not be a ballerina, but you still can dance!

Posted on February 10, 2010 by DeBorah Beatty

Did you have dreams when you were little? Remember when you could do and be anything you wanted to? Or, at least believing that way? What happened?

Did you want to be an astronaut, a circus bareback rider, a super hero or a ballerina? And did your body not live up to your expectations and you found yourself too tall, to round or even worse?

Or, were there people around you who told you you couldn’t be what you dreamed of being? People who had other plans for your life and, because you wanted to please them, you parked the dreams somewhere and forgot where you left them? Well, unlike forgetting where you parked your car at a shopping center, once you lose track of where you left your dreams, it’s very easy to leave them lost and move on.

But that’s not okay with me because I believe dreams are given to us to be experienced, to be lovingly lived. There are times that the dreams we had as children cannot be once we move into what is laughingly called adulthood, but they don’t have to be allowed to disappear entirely.

Say for example, you wanted to be a ballerina. That particular career  requires a lithe, disciplined, athletic body. You don’t have one of those. You’re now too tall, too round, too creaky and no way flexible enough to be one, so how can you possibly live your dream?

Well, there’s a song by Melanie Safka, Ballerina” that keeps going through my mind and was part of the impetus for writing this. The chorus line is:

“You didn’t grow up to be a ballerina, but you do a mean song and dance.”

There’s a world of meaning in that line. It says maybe you can’t live your dream in the exact form it was in when you were a child, but when you own the dream and you make it entirely your own, you can live it as you are for all you’re worth!

What was it about being a ballerina that made you want to be one? How can you get back in touch with what it felt like to want that as a life? How can you get back in touch with that starstruck child full of wonder and sparkle who wanted nothing more than to dance her story? You find another expression of that passion. Once you can break down the attraction and the attributes that had your little heart going pitty-pat, go for those things now.

*     Get tickets to the ballet and love every minute of the show.

*     Fill your space with music that makes you want to dance.

*     Find a way to dance a little every day, no matter what style, just move and enjoy the movement.

*     Get yourself a pair of ballet shoes and hang them where you’ll see them to remind you not to park your dreams any more.

If a ballerina wasn’t your thing, find comparable ways to get back in touch with the part of that dream that had you breathless with excitement and expectation.

And think about this while you’re at it:

It wasn’t the dream that went away, it was your passion for it and your belief in its possibility. You didn’t give up on the dream, you gave up on your invulnerability and your belief that you could do anything you wanted.

I’m here to tell you that you are still invulnerable, you can still do whatever it is you want to do. No matter what that may be.

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