July 28th, 2005

I'm a dreamer. I like believing that my dreams will come true somehow someday. The thing is, I never learned to let go of my dreams. I've held on to them so tightly and when they didn't come true, I was overwhelmed by disappointment. Because of that, I started to stop believing. In fact, there was a point when I shut my heart, mind and soul from dreaming.

However, no matter how many times I've been disappionted, hurt or frustrated, somehow I still couldn't help but keep beleiving that maybe all my dreams will come true. Often times because I get caught up with trying to make what I wish come true that I miss out on the simple abundance that come my way. For a while, I just learned to be content and not to wish for more.  I guess it's like zeroing in on that one thing and everything is just peripheral.

I guess holding on to my dreams is a good thing to some extent, but there has to be a point in which I can open up my hands and let it fly away. It's not necessarily giving up my dreams,but setting it aside and embracing what has come my way.

Take for example how many times I have crushed love and happiness because it wasn't the way I imagined it to be. I kept on insisting that if only it were so, my life would be perfect. When I finally got the chance to try to make that fit, I realized it wasn't the perfect fit I had anticipated. It's very much like how I've held on to a dream that someone I once thought I really "loved" would come back. In fact, thoughts of him and of what might be consumed almost every waking moment. In that span of time, I missed out on so much and yes, I will admit it now, three years later, that I was unfair to a lot of people around me while I pined away for what I thought was the perfect one.

My email signature reads a quote about crayons, and how although they're all different, they've all learned to co-exist nicely in the same box. But all the time I held on to that one color I wanted, all the colors faded to the background. Finally after all this time I got it. To see the beauty of the rainbow, I need to wash away all the bleak greyness and allow the sunshine through. I can't make all my dreams come true the way I want it to...and yes, believing it will happen is a good thing, but I need to remember that waking up from these dreams may be even better. It's one thing to not beleive in dreams, but it's another to keep willing it to happen despite signs disproving it. More importantly, just becuase it wasn't the happily ever after I had imagined it to be doesn't mean happily ever after does not exisist. Furthermore, it really is easier to be happy if I can look beyond the imperfections and the wrong hues than to keep seeking happiness by making everything match perfectly in the exact same shade and order.

Thus comes the birth of the daydream beleiver...the one with a heart of a dreamer, a mind of a realist and the soul of a believer. Sometimes these three argue relentlessly but in the end, they come up with the perfect blend of the grounded reality of yesterday, the hopeful anticipation of tomorrow and the serene acceptance of today. 

They say happiness is a butterfly which when pursued is always beyond your grasp but which, if you sit down quietly, may alight on you. Maybe dreams work the same way. And so while I dream, I will sit here quietly believing that when the moment comes, it will come true. It may not be the way I expect it to happen, but it's gotta be in a much better way than I had expected. And when it does, I will see my beautifully colored world, full of butterflies and rainbows in glorious sunshine. After all, that's what dreams are made of.