Don’t quit your dreams!

Last Updated on August 1, 2016 by Patrick

I went shopping the other day and, while I was browsing the aisles, I saw a girl walk by me who was wearing a black t-shirt that had this slogan written in white: “Don’t quit your dreams!”.

Now, that was really a revelation for me. You know, things happen for each and everyone of us in our lives, only it depends on whether we ignore them or we really pay attention to them. Signs are everywhere. Guidance is everywhere. Only living our lives in a fantasy fabricated by our own will and mind used the wrong way, in the inappropriate situations and places, so to speak, that are the barriers between us and our real lives. Each and everyone of us have a mission to fulfill in life, only we are making the wrong choices, I may say.

I was in a period in my life when I asked myself if this is the right thing that I should do, what with the practice of arts and all. And this revelation came to me in the right moment. I finally understood that if you find yourself, the pursuit that belongs to yourself than stick with it. Stay there and do your thing! Don’t quit! :)

I used to be a quick, hasty quiter and this haunted me up until now, so to speak.

There is a difference between dreams and fantasies.

Dreams are conscious visions that we have, projects that we envision we would like to accomplish, things we would like to do because we know ourselves and we know what we want. We are creating them with our conscious imagination. We know what we like to do, even from the beginning of our lives, from childhood. We know what belongs to us, what we pursue. We know ourselves enough to know what we are doing. And there’s nothing wrong with this. It is the right way.

On the other hand, fantasies are regurgitations of our unconscious mind. They have a life of their own. Their projector is the bottled conscience which is our ego with all its defects. It spews out these so-called thoughts, which are in fact fantasies, not being real at all. We would like to be this or that but only because we were told so. These are borrowed information from someone else. They don’t belong to us. They have nothing to do with us. We are thinking not our thoughts, we are speaking not our words and we are not thinking for ourselves either.

Now, one interesting example is with people who want to have relationships as couples but use the wrong tools in the process, so to speak. Men and women all over the world have fantasies and end up living them instead of living their own lives. It’s actually other people’s lives that they are living, people who are actually not real, but imaginary in their own mind. This could sound a bit awkward and bizarre, but it is true. We can discover this at a more detailed analysis.

Let me give you an example. When we are single.. boys, girls, men and women alike, we have our own dreams, right? Some of us even get to live them. After we get to know someone and engage in a relationship life changes for us dramatically. The first spark of falling in love is there but unfortunately we begin to make calculations in everything, including in our love life. We calculate and plan what we should do. Should we get married or not? How many children are we going to have? Where would we stay: at his or at her place? How are we going to relate with our in laws? Etc. But these are very much fantasies. Indeed, some of them are based on real facts of the given relationship but they twist reality into living another life that may not correspond with us. We are simply making a huge problem out of simple life situations. We worry too much and make all kinds of plans and calculations on how to overcome them.

Then, when children finally arrive into this world, in our lives, our dreams, hopes, noble aspirations are finally gone. The tumult of the day-to-day life is swallowing us from moment to moment. We calculate our lives away thinking that we are in charge and we should do this or that, or the other, and we forget about simply living our lives. We calculate our life away. And there is also a lot of pressure on our shoulders.

Indeed, in a relationship one must make sacrifices for the other, but the problem is that all of us sacrifice who we are for the sake of the other. We become someone else who is not real. The biggest part of the problem is that he is sacrificing himself for her and she is doing the same thing. When these calculations start and enter people’s lives and relationships, the feeling of falling in love slowly fades away and that relationship is not a paradise anymore but rather turns into a living hell with pressures from all sides, including and especially from within us.

We forget that we fell in love with the other because we love who he or she really is. We love the significant other for what he or she is, for who he or she is, not for who pretends to be. We didn’t fall in love with a fantasy. Otherwise, what good would a relationship be if what we love is just a fantasy? We fell in love with the real person.

But this tends to be forgotten once the calculations of the mind start. When you put the mind at work in a certain area which doesn’t belong to it, out of its place, soon you will find yourself in a painfully complicated labyrinth from where you may never get out.

But returning to that moment of falling in love we find that he loves her for who she is, right? .. including for what she has: her dreams, her aspirations etc. The same goes for here. This is a mutual respect for one another and rather not an imposed situation in which everyone of us must be. There isn’t a life rule to fall in love, have a relationship and have kids, but rather a calling from within, a natural calling. It requires us to let go and let ourselves be guided.

There is this respect for the other and for his or her free will and intimacy or privacy. But most couples, nowadays, are engaging into a relationship in which they stay so close to each other, being affraid to lose the other, that they suffocate one another. They lose respect for the other’s intimacies on the pretext of “not having anything to hide”. But what is this really? Are we living a love life or are we living in a prison where we are supervised, monitored from moment to moment?

They forget about their friends too, about spending some time with them every once in a while and so on. No! They’re in a relationship now and don’t have time for this. They must spend time with each other. There is no freedom to do anything but the relationship and that’s that! And this is not love. They live in the prison of their own fantasies. This is a false love.

But what about single people who are not in a love relationship? Well, some of them find themselves, do the things they need to do, the things they like to do and are happy, but others aren’t. The situations vary from person to person. People who go astray from their path are the ones who in one situation or another choose something else. They commit the crime to go away from themselves and live another life that doesn’t really belong to them. And it’s a shame.

But when people stay into their zone and live their own lives, they will even have the resources to resist the toughest of situations that may appear in their paths. If not, then they will be overwhelmed and one day something’s gotta give. They would collapse from all the pressures, frustrations and all the stress.

There are obstacles in life, yes, but we can respond differently to them when we are accomplished in our lives, than if we weren’t.

For me, once I found my path I cannot go astray even if I want to. It keeps calling me in to walk it. I cannot quit my dreams even if I want to, and there are times when I want to quit. They keep coming and coming. I am inspired everyday so I cannot stop this, nor can I control it. It is much more powerful than me.

Others do leave their paths to pursue something else, other “avenues”, and they are or will not be happy nor accomplished, eventually. Sometimes they haven’t connected well enough with themselves and their paths or pursuits and this takes a toll on them. The price is their own happiness, even their own lives.

So, don’t quit your dreams! Stay with them! You won’t regret it. Go back to your childhood! Rediscover yourself and reconcile with yourself! It is necessary.

The whole world has gone astray and this is due to living a fantasy, not a dream, to living an unreal life where all the bad things may happen. We need to return to ourselves and quickly! :)