dreamer

The Labels We Wear

Every day, I wear a plastic badge that hangs on a lanyard around my neck. It has a picture of me, and my name. It identifies me as an employee, labels me as a teacher who works in the building. It's not the only label I've worn. I've had to wear ones that read Guest, Event Staff, and Hi, my name is Paul. The most recent one that has hung from my neck is Divorced.

That label has led to a few more collecting around my neck--DamagedUsedLimited, Insufficient. I'm not quite sure who's responsible for slipping them over my head--other people or me.

***

We all wear labels. (Engineer. Architect. Nurse. Doctor. Writer. Son. Daughter. Husband. Wife. Responsible. Goofy. Procrastinator. Victim. Screw-up. Confused. Lonely. Unloved.) Some of them we have, indeed, put on ourselves. Some of them we've allowed other people to place over our heads, ruffling our hair, making our collars lopsided. Some can weigh several pounds, pull our heads down, drum against our chests with heavy thuds when we try to move.

It's tough to sort out which ones actually describe us and which don't.

I hate that the word (divorce) is part of my past, part of my story now, but perhaps it's strangely fitting because long, long ago, I swore I wouldn't wear the label of Typical.

I decided as a kid that I would never work a typical desk job. That decision has stuck with me ever since. Not only have I refused to push papers or slave away at a computer all day, I'm realizing more and more that what I'm doing now is even too typical for me. Just a few weeks ago, I was talking to somebody who said to me, "There isn't a job or job title that fits guys like us. We're going to have to create a job that doesn't yet exist."

I don't relate with people who know that they'll retire from the same position and company in thirty years.

I don't see the point in waiting until I'm sixty to enjoy life and to travel. I don't see the need to stop working when I'm sixty, either.

I don't dream of a white picket fence and a two-car garage with a Mercedes in the driveway.

I'll drive two hours if it means half an hour of meaningful interaction with a friend.

I only go jogging if there's heavy rain or a thunderstorm.

actually think that I can sustain a sense of adventure and child-like wonder no matter how old I get. I actually believe that people can grow more and more in love as time passes--and I believe that despite what the scoreboard says about my past.

I've come to accept that my story includes a few twists and turns, some detours from the well-traveled path.

I've decided to drop the dead weight of labels and identities that don't belong to me. Typical: I won't wear it. I won't wear Damaged. I won't wear Limited. I won't wear Insufficient. Not anymore.

***

I cut lanyard after lanyard from my neck and let them fall like dead tree limbs to the ground. I look at what's left. These are some of the ones I think I'll keep for now:

Dreamer. Adventurer. Friend. Survivor. Learning. Striving. Loved. Determined. Hopeful. 

They're much lighter to carry.

They look way better on me.

The Anti-Dream and the Dreamer.

mt washington

There are some dreams I'm afraid to dream because of the probability they won't happen.

Some of the best examples are the ones having to do with girls when I was growing up. I would imagine what a date would be like. I would picture what the first kiss would be like. I would visualize some elaborate scenario in which she would have a terrible day but would later find me standing outside her room in the rain getting pneumonia. Always something having to do with me standing in the rain because that means that you care more or something like that.

Along the way, though, I learned to squash those thoughts as soon as they popped into my head. You know why? Because as soon as I dreamed a scenario happening a perfect way, I knew that it would now never happen that way.

That's the curse of the anti-dream--the dream that will never come to be because it's not possible. I'm telling you--it's real. As soon as I would picture the perfect night with the perfect girl with the perfect kiss, I might as well say goodbye. Now it would never happen quite like that.

It sounds silly when it's about young love, but I've learned to succumb to the fear of the anti-dream in a whole slew of areas: dreams about my job, my finances, my marriage, my friendships, my church.

I'm tempted at times to think that being a dreamer is like being a kite. We have these brilliant, inspired moments where we soar high on a gust of wind. Inevitably, the wind will die down, and we will come crashing down to the earth.  We will spend more time recovering from the crashes, more time trying to get back off the ground again than we will in the sky, and ultimately, more time shoved in the basement somewhere because kites are silly fads anyway.

That is the sober reality, isn't it? When you dream, you ask for disappointment. So to experience less disappointment, the clear solution is to dream less. Shelve them. Shove them in the basement to collect dust and fade from your memory.

I'm tempted to believe that. I'm tempted to sink into cynicism. It is easier, after all. Less heartache to deal with.

But deep in my soul, I know that we dreamers aren't kites in a constant state of falling to the earth. We are not victims of gravity. We are wired to rise, to fly, to move and reach upward.

We need to aim high without fear of falling of short so we can know what's possible. We want to see just how far the sky reaches and how far the ocean stretches. We would rather blast ourselves into orbit to see how expansive the earth is than to safely assume that the world is flat and that what we see in our small boxes is all that is possible or attainable.

We open ourselves up to disappointment and the scorn of cynics, but we always pick ourselves up and dream again.

And the hope of what could be, for me anyway, eventually overpowers the lie of the anti-dream: that just because things don't turn out exactly as we pictured them, they are not worth dreaming.

I've learned that dreams don't come true, at least exactly as we expect them. If they happened exactly as we thought them up in our heads, I think they would lack a certain richness and depth. There's something about the unexpected obstacles, the bumps and bruises, the setbacks, the pain, that bring a more powerful sense of fulfillment than the rosy scenes I dream in my head.

Ultimately, dreams have saved me. They've helped me know in my heart when something is wrong and needs to be made right. They've become my true north, my reason to get out of bed in the morning, my elixer to bring me back from the dead in those stretches of life where I more resemble a zombie than a human living life vibrantly.

Not everyone is a dreamer. Not everyone is willing to face the inevitable disappointments. But I can't deny that I am. It's one of the truest, most essential pieces of who I am. You and I, the dreamers, we have to fight for our identity.

Always look up, always get up when we fall, always look up again.

It's what we do.