Reuniting with my first Dream

I am addressing those of you who are over 30 years old or even some of you who are in your 20s. Do any of you remember what your first dream was? When you were a child, did you remember what you wanted to be when you grow up? Is the question to broad?

Let me simplify it. Do you remember that first moment you had, when you saw something and in your hearts of hearts decided that this is what you wanted to do for the rest of your life? Your first dream?

As a child our wants and needs were like a butterfly, moving from one idea to the other. Like sponge anything that caught our attention we wanted to do or be. It could be something we heard on the radio, saw on the television or read in a book. If it was interesting enough, then that was our dream for a few hours or the day, a week and maybe a few months. Once those temporary dreams were fulfilled or when we lost interest we move on to something else.

Many of us will not remember what some of these temporary dreams were. Most of us might need to go and ask our parents what we said we wanted to be when we grew up. You might hear some of the same things on the list;

‘She wanted to be a doctor, a nurse, a ballerina. At one time she saw a beautiful flower on the television and wanted to be that flower, she cried her heart out when I told her that she cannot be a flower’.

‘He said that he wanted to be He-man, a transformer, an astronaut, a policeman. Once he said when he grew up he will marry me because I was the bestest Mummy in the world. I could still remember he was angry with his Dad for a whole day when his Dad told him that he had already marry me so he will have to find someone else’.

‘You know kids at that age they are full of potential, anything is possible at that age, they are not afraid to let go of dreams because new ones will fill that space’.

So true. But I digress…

Do you remember that very first dream you had that survived your childhood? Did it survived adulthood as well? Did you work hard to try and accomplish that dream and then bask in your success? Is it now at rest because you accomplish it? Are you faithfully trying to accomplish it? Or is it malnourish because you put it away saying that you will come back to it after you deal with what is in front of you? Only now and then glancing at it, but never really giving it your full attention?

Did it die because you neglect it and then forgot about it? Did it die because ‘more information things’ was place on top of it? It could no longer compete with the ‘more important things’ and after a while it became neglected. Those things became too heavy, it could not breathe and died of suffocation.

Like many of you, I had some many dreams of what I wanted to be when I grew up, that I have forgotten what some of them were. But one survived my childhood. I remember as a child I love to read. I was an avid reader. There was nothing more I enjoyed than a good book. From an early age I decided I wanted to read books or write books for the rest of my life.

By the time I was an adolescent. I decided that I wanted to be a Writer.

I use to write and scribble like crazy. My inspiration was life itself. I use to carry around a note pad with me and just write. Poems, short stories, my thoughts, my feelings, my aspiration. It was all written down.

A sunset, the rain, someone’s laughter, my school, friends, a television programme, a song or movie my holidays overseas, a new country, sitting/standing on the train or bus. Inspiration was everywhere, so I wrote to my heart content. All was well with my soul.

My writing was my full time job. Oh I had other jobs but they were things that I did. It did not matter that no-one else saw or read what I wrote. I was just happy that I wrote.

Looking back now, I saw that the older I got. The less I wrote. Other things started to take prominence in my life. I started to focus on other things and slowly my writing was place on the ‘shelf’ in my life and it was on a back ‘shelf’. It lost it importance. Other things was now more important

You know what those things are. Those pisky ‘adult’ things. Like paying the mortgage, paying the bills, credit cards, water, electricity. Getting a good job with an excellent salary. Climbing the corporate ladder. These things were all on the ‘kitchen table’ of my life and my writing was reduce to ‘work’. Sometimes I will not even write. Maybe make a note on a pad concerning some client’s account. Or write little post-it notes to pass on to a colleague. I will be typing short emails to clients, or other colleagues. It was part of a job. There was no joy in it. It was not writing anymore

Without realising it, I stop writing. My dream was no longer active in my life. In fact it was not on the back shelf anymore. It was not on my radar, I did not know where I placed it, so I forgot about it.

Until recently. Ironically, I remembered my dream because I stopped working.

You see it was coming towards the end of our annual holiday rota at work and I was informed that I still had over two weeks holiday that I have not taken yet. HR told me that I had to take it and it could not be carried over.

So there I was at home with nowhere to go. The first few days I was actually happy to get some rest. But then I started to go up the wall because I was not the type of person to sit around and do nothing. Then one day as I was in my sitting room vaguely watching something on television, a small voice inside of me spoke up ‘where is your writings?’

The effect it had on me was so strong you might have believed that someone had punch me. My body froze as if trying to digest the words. They were foreign to my sense after all those years of forgetting them.

Then in slow motion I started to search my memory, trying to find out what happened to all of my writings, my poetry, and my stories. After some many years, where did I put them, I realised after some many years I did not know. I was in full panic now. You know that type of panic where your whole body realise that you did something wrong and you should try and rectify it but at the same time you are unsure if you can rectify it.

Panic drove me off the sofa and for a few seconds I tried to think about where I could search for them- my writings. I knew there was no need to search the living room because they were not a part of my everyday living life so they are not in the living room. I went into the hallway and knew immediately they were not in the cupboards neither were they in the kitchen.

That same panic drove me into my bedroom, my sanctuary. A horrified sob left my mouth as I realise that my dreams was not there. I knew every part of this room and I just knew they were not in this room. My dreams were not in my sanctuary. Where were they?

I raced to the spare bedroom looking around wildly. I started to throw things around, trying to find them. To find my dreams again. My mind, refusing to believe that I have gotten rid of them, remembered that I store important paperwork in the wardrobe. ‘Go and check, maybe they are there’ it whispered to me.

I rushed over to the large built in wardrobe, silently pleading with myself, ‘please let them be here, please let them be here’. I started pulling things out of it, bills, clothing, shoes, toys, photos, work files, mortgage documents, solicitors letters. They were all pulled and fling carelessly over my shoulder as I desperately tried and dig out my abandoned dreams.

They suddenly I stopped as my eyes spied the bright yellow fluorescent colour folder from my childhood. Tears of joy filled my eyes. I knew what that folder held. My writing, my poems, my inspiration. My dreams.

Buried at the bottom of my wardrobe, in the spare bedroom in my house. I found my dreams again. I did not remember when I moved them out of my life and placed them in a place that was for guest. A transit place for things that will enter my life for a short period. I did not remember when my subconscious made me store that folder with paperwork that I will not carelessly throw away.

The absolute relief I felt made me carefully pick up the folder and opened it. Memories rush up to meet me like old friends. I sat there and just read through the whole portfolio of my dreams and aspirations. With each poem/story I read, it felt like I was connecting with an old friend; a part of myself that I buried years ago. A part of me that I thought was long gone

They survived. They survived my childhood, my teenage years and by some miracle my adulthood as well. I did not know how long I sat and read. I just knew after I finish reading I wanted to write again. Inspiration started to flood in again. I took pen to paper and started to write again, like I did before. I felt so happy writing.

Ironically, the thing that took me again from my dreams was the same thing that sent me back to it.

For those of you reading. Do not give up on your dreams. As long as there is life in your body there is a chance for you to fulfil them. You dreams will be with you until you fulfil them, if you kill them or when you are dead.

They will never give up on you. Do not give up on them.