Dreamer (620 words)

During a discussion with a friend I remembered this post that I wrote in 2006 and updated in 2009. I believe it is just as true today.

Dreamer

“You got to have a dream, If you don’t have a dream, How you gonna have a dream come true?” – South Pacific

We have all dreamt while asleep and some of us will have woken up and thought, “That’s a good idea, I must follow that through”. Mainly though the visionary plans we call dreams come to us when awake, often forming and becoming clearer little by little over many days or even years. Those of us lucky enough to have such dreams have the chance to do all we can to realise them.

“Everybody builds a dream in their lifetime. You’re either going to build your dream, or somebody else’s. So build your own!” – Christopher LaBrec

There are more dreams in the world than people and (in a memetic way) each dream is vying for our time and energy. Many dreams never get off the ground. What in the pub or in the bath seems like a great idea will the next morning at work or at the shops give way to humdrum everyday life. Each of the small activities, filling so much of our day, is just part of someone else’s dream. If you are not doing your dream job the likelihood is you are working for someone else who once had a great dream. If you work for the Virgin group you are part of Richard Branson’s dream. When you buy Kentucky Fried Chicken are you not living Colonel Sander’s dream?

We would have to live on a desert island to avoid become part of other people’s dreams!

I have had many great ideas, a few I have focused on and created something tangible. The majority have been crowded out, never really seeing the light of day.

In business I wanted my own successful training business. The reality I have realised is that joining in with other trainers and sharing each other’s dreams makes perfect sense. This troubled me at first. I worried about losing my own dream. It has taken a while to appreciate this sharing of other people’s dreams is giving the greatest boost to my dreams.

“Any dream will do” – Joseph, The Musical

If you have a dream that you really care about and feel one day it will come to fruition, no matter what that dream might be please do not lose it. Even if you find yourself doing other people’s stuff 99% of the time save 1% for your special dream. Also do not limit yourself to one great idea. Have as many dreams as you want. If your first dream isn’t working out or you cannot find anyone to share it with, then you will have dream 2, dream 3, dream 4…… to turn to.

What has this to do with bipolar recovery? I think that so often when we get labelled with a mental illness we can be expected (by others and perhaps by ourselves) to forget the dreams we had before or not to follow new dreams in case they turn out to be too grandiose. However, recovery requires us to have longer term plans than just getting through each day. Yes, at first it is likely to be about getting through each day – or even getting through each 5 minutes. One day, we need to consider ourselves recovered enough to dream of things being better and then letting ourselves have the energy to make a fresh start towards making dreams come true.

What do you hope to do? If you haven’t done so for a while, you might like to take a moment now to write down a few things you hope to achieve.

Dare I ask: Is there anything I could help you with?

© 2009 Roger Smith www.stoppaddling.com Bipolar Recovery Bite-size©