“You do realize that people have dreams that don’t come true, right?”
Someone close to me made that comment over the phone one summer night. I was sitting on my patio in Austin, Texas.
I can’t recall what led to that point in the conversation, but I was so stunned by that statement that I still think about it years later.
The assumption that I’m some sort of Pollyanna who hasn’t experienced loss is incredible, because I’ve spent the entirety of my adult life grieving opportunities and dreams that I’ve had to pack away.
The thing about dreams, though, is that even if they don’t come true, you can still be sad when things fail, and you can still imagine what it’d be like if they didn’t.
What do you do when the life you imagined for yourself keeps getting further away from the life you’re actually living?
But the older I get, the harder it is to tell the difference between dreams I’m supposed to let go of and dreams I haven’t had a fair chance to pursue.
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