Richmond, VA

Merry meet Friends!
Michelle here, bringing lots of love and light!

"Too many of us are not living our dreams because we are living our fears"  ~ Les Brown

"All of our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them." ~ Walt Disney

"There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure." ~ Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

I was speaking with a friend last night.  We hadn't spoken in some time but spoke as if we had not had a break.  We spoke about finding our purpose and living our passions.  I said to her that I wasn't sure of my passion.  I know what I believe is my purpose but I am not sure exactly how to implement it.  I've known her for more than 25 years and we have had these same types of conversations for most of that time.  

As she spoke she made a comment about something she wondered if she should do.  I was immediately reminded of something I wanted to do back in the 90's and of something she said that I should incorporate into that idea.  I told her and she remembered, she said she never forgot. Then she went on to talk about the idea and the name I wanted to use.  I told her that I had forgotten all about the idea and the name until this conversation and her saying the name.  I asked, "How do we forget our dreams?  Was it not important to us? Was it really a dream?"  We concluded that the dream is still within us, (because I remembered as soon as I heard a reminder) but we place them on the back burner as we move on with life.  

I think, though, that the deferred dream is deferred because of fear; of failure, of success, of not measuring up, etc.  Langston Hughes, in his poem "Harlem" (also known as "A Dream Deferred") says
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
Like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore-
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over-
like a syrupy sweet/
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
To defer something means to suspend or withhold for or until a certain time or event.  Sometimes we consciously defer and sometimes we don't.  We allow other things to take precedence, which in a sense is a conscious choice.  

I mentioned to a coworker that there were things I wanted to do in the past and sometimes in the present but allowed fear to stop me. She said that she never would have thought that about me; that I didn't present myself in that way.  I responded that I became better after reading Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway by Susan Jeffers.  I tackled some things that had paralyzed me for years.  Fear is crippling and will cause one to defer their dreams.  I think deferred dreams do all of the above in Langston's poem.  I think mine dried like a raisin in the sun.  

I was happy and sad to remember that dream.  Happy because I could revive it and sad because I forgot it.  Our dreams can become a reality if we let them.  "Nothing beats a failure but a try" is something I've always heard.  Dreams don't always come to fruition on the first try but persistence can make it happen.  We can not allow our negative self talk and the negativity of others to deter us from our dreams.  Wikipedia says that dreams are successions of images, ideas, emotions, and sensations that occur usually involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep.  Maybe we have these images, ideas, emotions and sensations during sleep which stay with us long after we awaken.  We then daydream about them.  Daydreaming: a short term detachment from one's immediate surroundings, during which a person's contact with reality is blurred and partially substituted by a visionary fantasy,especially one of happy, pleasant thoughts, hopes or ambitions, imaged as coming to pass, and experienced while awake.  Whew!

I think many inventions are the result of daydreaming.  How do we know whether it's a blurred vision of reality and not reality itself? Do we know whether or not our dreams are 'real"?  The "thing" exists somewhere.  It cries out to be brought into existence in the physical realm.  The poet Rumi said "That the thing we seek is also seeking us."  I love that!  When we let our dreams defer, we must pick them up again so that they can exist; they are after all seeking us. Continue to dream but allow the dream to come forth and live.  Let's "live our dreams and not our fears" as Les Brown said.  Let's start today, NOW, in the present moment.

Until next Sunday,
Merry part and merry meet again,
Blessed be,
Gypsi Mama Michelle