Why it’s never too late to dream: Nurturing your aspirations

By Janet Marugg | FāVS News Columnist

Who is immune to the woo of things? Not me. I love serendipitous twists, making wishes on stars, birthday candles and dandelion puffs. I’m all in for coincidences, synchronicities and simply being in the right place at the right time. I wonder freely about chaos and string theories, butterfly effects, meta and quantum physics, anti-matter and black holes, God particles, philosophical aphorisms and koans and all the mysteries of the unknown. Consider me wooed.

Of late I’m thinking of human aspirations — that longing for our potential unhindered by circumstance. The dreams of children. Is there anything as tragic as losing dreams that make a person love being alive even when it’s painful?

The tragedy of lost dreams

As a girl, I dreamed of being an archeologist when I grew up. This conflicted with the “trad wife” role the religion of my birth claimed for me. In the end, I did a little of both and call myself fortunate. I came to the idea that digging for artifacts was more about finding people. If I could know people, I could know myself and never be lonely. Little girl thoughts.

These days I dig in the garden and wander my mind. It boards the school bus with the kids to the school up the street. The county built a new jail in the other direction. In between the two, stake a wayward vine and think of my juxtaposition, this triad.

From here, I’d wager that not one student in elementary grades dreams of growing up to reside in that correctional facility. I’d bet my bucket of green beans the children are dreaming of being doctors, engineers, creators, teachers, public servants/firefighters/police officers, builders, truck drivers, archaeologists, gardeners and more in that school.

I’d bet my bucket of raspberries that kids at that elementary school today dream of being inventors of marvelous things, creators of beauty and healers of tomorrow. The loss of their childhood dream is a ruinous thing.

The value of imagination

Dreams may vanish from our hold, but there’s no doubt that dreams are inherently creative, and I wonder if nurturing imagination and creativity is a way to stay friendly with our deepest dreams. What if we cultivated dreams, tended them as seeds, made them useful and beautiful parts of our lives?

Sometimes I catch myself being overly academic, philosophical and scientific, as if my secular humanism values logic over emotion, intuition and dreams. When I catch myself living in my head too much, I take a scan for emotions, intuitions and dreams. A life of pure “logic” denies these important elements of our humanity.

Empathy (a reliable way to understand ourselves) and the connections and disconnections we make with others are pure emotion. We intuit most of what we think we know about the world, and then, a single random epiphany blows our rational minds, and we are never the same.

Creatives describe intuitive processes and divine inspiration and that woo-ish as it sounds, it happens to me enough to chase it. To cultivate creativity and imagination, innovator Phil McKinney recommends immersion in diverse art forms, free drawing and/or writing, visualizing, reading fiction and playing “what if?” He encourages looking with fresh eyes, challenging

assumptions, reframing problems, practicing empathy, keeping an open mind and questioning everything. Like a kid.

I pick a red jalapeno pepper and think, why should adults let kids have all the fun? Why leave the dreaming, the innovating, the transformative creation to kids? Kids don’t have the wisdom to be making a world. Where are the responsible adults here? I pick a green serrano pepper and take a deep breath to relax and remember I’m just imagining here. An old lady with the desire to aspire.

An individual’s aspirations are unique, like a fingerprint. It’s the rarest thing on earth — a one-in-eight-billion today and tomorrow-even-rarer kind of thing. That school down the street is a better investment than a diamond mine! Forget about minerals — eureka for the rare earth humans!

In my disembodied school bus ride, my imagination yells, “Hey kids! Keep dreaming! Keep imagining and making things! Archaeologists of the future are interested in your interests, not your penal records! Keep the candle of aspiration burning!”

I head inside with my woo and my haul, feeling better about things for no reason at all.