on chasing rainbows and faded dreams

August 26, 2006

Chasing our dreams can feel fruitless sometimes.

We spend our days wondering what waits at the end of this road we're on. We dream of changing the world, and touching the stars, and making a difference. We make plans, and set goals. Some of us spend our days in full pursuit of the things that inspire us, while other saunter casually down the road of life, knowing that the end of the road will rise up to meet them regardless of their pace. We are all so different from one another. But so much alike.

We bump our way along this road we travel, and at an obstacle or trial we bail out or compromise. We settle for less. While shooting for the stars we settle on a mountaintop and set up camp, because it's safe... it's comfortable. Men and women who dreamed of feeding the hungry or becoming doctors instead become janitors or telemarketers. One of the most promising minds in a college drops out because he feels inadequate. A girl walks away from being a dancer for a better paying and less satisfying job. Every day thousands of people just let life pass them by, deciding to put their energy towards being the best they can where they are at.

Look around you.

The grocery lady in her faded uniform who smiles gracefully as she slips into middle age. This was not her dream. When she was asked as a child who she wanted to be when she grew up, this was not her answer. The man in his fourties flipping burgers didn't always aspire for a 40 cent raise. It's hard stuff... this chasing of the pot of gold that may or may not be at the end of the rainbow. And who really knows? Who is to say that it won't be full of something worthless when you finally arrive? What defines who you are if the rainbow you've been chasing your whole life turns out to be a false promise?

I've been thinking a lot about what I want to do with my life and the person I want to become; the musician that I long to be, the dreams I want to call my own, the wife I want to be someday to someone, and the mother I want to be to my children... the legacy that I will leave behind when I am gone.

Chances are, the world won't know my name. My face won't illuminate a billboard or rest on the cover of a magazine, and that isn't the way I always dreamed that my life would be. I dreamed of people singing along with my music, or sitting on a stage with my guitar in hand, and knowing that things that I wrote somehow made a difference. That they changed something.

I'm not implying that my life is over, or that those dreams aren't possible now. But I've realized now that making a difference or changing the world is something I can accomplish without my name being known. Who ever said that the healing of a wound was more dramatic than the healing of the human heart? Who decided that being a full-time mother was less noteworthy than going platinum or gracing the pages of a medical journal?

What does it really take to change the world anyway? And what's stopping you?

I will dream. I will sing and I will dance. I will aspire and I will change things. And while the world may not know my name, I will know the difference between a failure and a success. While my music may never make it past the ears of the people that love me, it might make a difference in one of them. And the smallest difference might mean the world to someone else. Life is a chain reaction. It is the dedicating of yourself to the people around you and the surroundings that you're in. It's doing the best you can with the things you've been given.

Maybe chasing our rainbows isn't so fruitless after all.