Psst: I’ve moved. Visit me here http://streetsideconvos.com. Maybe the new blog will be for you. Maybe not.
“Hi nice to meet you, my name is Ebele.”
“Nice to meet you too.”
“Tell me about your broken dreams.”
Maybe that is one of the questions we should ask these days instead of the boring “what do you do?”.
Without sounding dramatic I am surrounded by broken dreams. By these dreamers fighting not to be disillusioned but not knowing what to do with the heaviness that comes from dreaming.
“Why do I dream too much?” I asked Emeka in frustration.
“That’s what I love most about you” was the response.
So many hopes, so many ideas, so many blueprints for the future.
Yet all we have is today and no idea of what tomorrow will look like.
Listen in and hear the broken dreams all around you. The hopes getting sore from lifting reality-sized weights.
I hear them.
I also hear hundreds of millions of people in my age range are unemployed.
Suddenly it seems the map the teachers and parents and uncles and aunties gave us aren’t enough for navigating a complex world.
No this is not blaming. This is owning.
Owning all the little broken dreams that I once cried over (in retrospect they weren’t even mine).
Mourning and celebrating simultaneously the journey to embody the new dreams I’m now pregnant with.
I’m not a very realistic person and somehow that has worked for me.
So back sore from trying to push back against “reality” I hold on.
This must be spiritual, emotional, mental strength training.
My tribe mourns together. We confess our losses. We face the rejections that keep us up all night crying but we’d dare not admit because what if we came off as depressed? At least we have ourselves to confess to.
In one breath we talk changing the world and in the other our job search. In one phone conversation we talk being broke and in the next creating value. In one moment we are so scared in the other we are so courageous.
We celebrate too. Those little ways we are dropping the fear. That tiny step forward that no one else may see. In the midst of our broken dreams, there is something in us that knows so well that we are making the future with those broken dreams. That they are stepping stones not stumbling blocks. After all they didn’t die, they broke – wide open to set us free to dream closer to the centre of ourselves. They set us free to soften into more humane versions of ourselves. They set us free to learn grace.
We move forward into a future that may not applaud us for anything. We applaud ourselves; we’ve come a long way. There’s a long way yet. We’ll cry some more. We’ll laugh some more; and something about it all will have us all saying “it’s all good”.
To my tribe of dreamers.
You are one of them.
Here’s another : http://thetruecornerstone.wordpress.com/2013/09/16/fear-of-the-unknown/
Pssst: Don’t be shy, leave me a comment 😉
Street-side convos 