When you loose a dream the ramifications are usually underestimated. A dream is a vague thing after all, different from goals; a dream is an idea structured around the business, the loving home, the child or the fishing time retirement, or whatever your dream may be; where an entanglement of threads goes in all directions, making things not only possible, but more than that worth working for. So, when a dream dies, there's a lot involved that includes everything from self-image to meaning, purpose to cause.
When a close one dies the idea of mourning is well understood. So well understood that representatives of life insurance companies use the broken heart symptom as a parameter to calculate the life expectancy of their clients. Loss of loved one shortens life expectancy so clearly that even the guys with the big bucks count on it. I suspect so does loss of dreams. Or, it can but probably don't have to if you find another dream to replace it with. Which indifferent from people is possible. Or parts at least. But first, you must allow yourself to grieve.
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| Reflections: Lake Pontchartrain, New Orleans |
I've been mourning a dream lately. It made me think of creating a ceremony for lost dreams. The big ones. Not willy nilly wishes and whims. But for real dreams that got lost, interrupted or just brutally torn apart. While pondering this I've been doing what any sane person does when uninspired and frustrated in combination, I've been cleaning. Frustrated, because without a holding-together dream, and no new holding-together-one-yet-born it's tricky to pour your energy into almost anything but just briefly. So, I have been cleaning a lot. This kind of cleaning goes by the rule "the grittier the better." Meanwhile many things in life in general can be done. The problem isn't "having something to do." Nor is it "doing things that's good for you," or "doing things that have to be done." There's plenty of those things around, every category. Like creativity for example.
While thinking of my ceremony I've been writing a series of blogposts, the only reason they were not published was that they were all in my mind, ranging from topics such as Manifestation Mania to Religions Is Cultural, Spirituality Is Individual and thrown in there were Medicalization of the Mind, The Dangers of Medicalizing Life with sidetracks of the poor creation of DSM-5, 4 and 3. All interesting enough subjects but I haven't felt inspired enough to print them down. When you grieve lost dreams most things look pretty meaningless. You can do a lot but you cannot do it with spark. Meaning is nothing you can force, any more than passion or joy. It's a byproduct of something else. I have been doing healing ceremonies though, because fortunately I have friends that like when I put them together so that, at least, has felt meaningful.
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| Reflections: City Park, New Orleans |
Speaking of which, the very same life insurance calculators bounce up your life expectancy a couple of notches if you belong to a religion. Which is interesting, considering that these guys don't kid around when counting. I assume the same principal applies to people with a non religious spiritual approach, which is good news for me, my Michael and many of my friends.
I've been walking an awful lot lately; early, early mornings because of the heat that makes most outdoors activities unbearable. Walking is good for body obviously but also for allowing the mind to wander. It was on one of those mind wanderings I found myself thinking,
"This is just so beautiful, it is truly great to be here, I think I'm really ready to create a new dream now." That's when I realized I had done my loosing dream ceremony. A month of gritty cleaning and robot movements through life had done part of the trick. But most importantly to allow myself to be in the feeling of loss. Because real dreams are not about accomplishing or getting things done, they are not a feather in your cap nor can they be ordered online. They are a soul contract with life and has to be let go off gently as well as reeled in gently and when the time comes to glide on to new horizons it will come naturally. Though some under the sink cleaning in the kitchen does help an awful lot.
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| In a Canoe by artist Wangechi Mutu, Sculpture garden, City Park, New Orleans |
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