The Renewing Mind/Sensitive Geek Man: The Death of Dreams

When I was a kid, I dreamed about being a chemist. Anyone who knows me and my relationship with math will understand why that is absurd.

But as we grow up, so do our dreams. At some point our seemingly rational mind develops its hopes, its dreams for what we will be.

My senior year of high school, I had to make a choice of what to major in. I narrowed it down to 3 choices: Theater, Music, and Writing. In the wisdom of an 18 year old, semi-privileged boy-man, I chose music, specifically Vocal Performance. I figured that I could learn to act on my own or through the music theater training I expected to receive, and I didn’t think I needed to go to school for writing.

I am not going to go into grand detail about my school experience; I just bring that up to illustrate my fledgling dreams. I wanted to perform, be creative, and create people and worlds. These were the direction I thought would let me do that.

One by one they have almost all crumbled. I could go into the sob stories about why they have, but as I look back on them I realize a few things.

There came a point with each where the effort and sacrifice required was no longer worth the supposed pay off and I stopped. I didn’t have to—as much as I thought I had no choice at the time. I abandoned them, although not from lack of desire for the art itself as much as the ‘extras’ that surrounded the art. My fear is that I stopped due to laziness or silliness.

The biggest problem was, simply, that my dreams were about me. They were selfish, self-absorbed, self-glorifying, and somewhat narcissistic endeavors. Perhaps they didn’t have to be, but they were because I made one very critical error.

I didn’t put Christ at the center of my future.

I’ve been a Christian since I was 12, and I grew up in a Christian family before that. Christ has always been part of my life in some way. When I accepted Him as my Savior and Lord, I was bequeathed the firmest foundation possible upon which to build this life. I made the mistake of not including Him enough in the actually building process.

So here I had a beautiful, strong Rock upon which to build the house of my life, and I built a gaudy mansion of garbage.

So, slowly but surely, that mansion had been torn down, slowly and painfully. I have tried to make my hopes more Christ-centered, but it seems that I still have some sort of learning to do, as they have all crumbled as well.

As much as I was (and still sometimes am) angry and sad about losing them, as much as I miss them, I now can see that their death was possibly the best thing that could have happened. They were dreams made of diaphanous debris. They would have accomplished nothing of real worth in and of themselves. They need to die in order that God could replace them with Himself.

As a believer, Jesus should replace all my dreams. He should be the reason for everything I do. He should be where I put my effort, where my mind wanders when I am thinking about grand and glorious things. When I think of my life, I should be thinking how it serves Him. When I think of myself, I should only see Christ reflected back. These other things are truly dreams: fleeting wisps, folly, a chasing after the wind.

One of those follies remains. My desire to write has not yet been crushed. I am determined to sanctify it. I see now that it must serve if it is to be useful. Any tool that does not serve is thrown into the fire. Writing is not a dream, imagination and wordsmithing are not the dream, they are the tools I use to pursue the Christ.

Really, all of life is a dream, a nightmare from which we will all one day wake. Only those in Christ will wake to Life.

So, I encourage you: Look at your life and find the dreams and frivolous hopes that must die. Perhaps the Lord will have compassion and He will sanctify those follies into tools for you, but do not hang on to them in that hope. It only makes it harder. See those things and do whatever you need to get them out of the way.

And don’t be fooled, this is a life-long struggle. I have to put down my broken dreams every day. It is never completely painless. But one day I will wake and look into the eyes of my Lord. On that day every true desire of my heart will find fulfillment. On that day all dreams will pale in comparison to the reality that is the presence of God. On that day, I will laugh at how frivolous all my earthly hopes were and then I will forget them.

On that day, there will be too much celebration and joy to even consider past sufferings.

Sensitive Geek MAN: Death of Dreams Intro (I missed a day)

Yesterday was the first day that I missed writing here.

I apologize for that.

Now you are probably thinking "well, that's no big deal, it happens." I agree, it does. Yesterday was busy and through all the craziness it got overlooked. We all have days like that and I appreciate your understanding.

However, one of the major reasons for this blog was to get me writing. Writing is one of those things that you need to do every day in order to really get in the habit of it and start progressing in quality. I have put off this 'dream' of writing for so many years, that I am hoping that working on something as simple as this blog will get me going on my other writing. So when I miss a day, even for good reason, I get a little nervous.

The reason I get nervous is ultimately because, in a weird way, Writing as a Profession is my last dream. Growing up, I had all these dreams of what I would do with myself as an adult, and I feel like one-by-one they have all been dashed. Writing is the only one that is left that hasn't really been eviscerated yet and I am afraid to lose it. That fear (along with some other things) has kept me from really pursuing it for all these years.

I suppose I think that if all my childhood dreams die, if none of my original wishes for my life come true, then I have failed as a person. I will feel like some last piece of hope or innocence or something will finally be gone, and I am afraid of the person I will be if that happens. I've seen how my other dreams dissolving in front of me has affect my personality, and there are a lot of things I don't like about the process.

So I write here hoping it will lead to writing elsewhere.
And today I will write 2 blogs, to catch up.
And the next blog will be about how on the Death of Dreams and how it is actually good.

Sensitive Geek MAN/The Renewing Mind: The Cake is a lie

I've pursued lots of things in the attempt to become Awesome.

There seems to be a thought in our culture that any, and perhaps even ALL, of us have the ability to become something phenomenal. Television, Movies, Radio, Books, and even the people around you tell you things that make you feel like you have it in you to be Superman.
The problem is that this is a lie.

No one can be Superman.  Not even Superman is really Superman. Whatever you accomplish in life, you will always be able to see some way that you could have theoretically have been better, greater than you are now. Everyone falls short of their supposed potential.

But falling short isn't the issue (it is The Issue, but not the focus of our current discussion.) The issue is that the World tells you that you can be a Superstar, so when you feel like you aren't the Superstar you were meant to be or thought you could be, you are devastated or feel like a failure.  You wonder where you've gone wrong.

I feel like this a lot. I had a lot of dreams and goals I wanted to accomplish. In a very strict sense, I have accomplished very few of them. Many--possibly most--have died a horribly painful death. When I see the death of these things, I feel like a failure. What have I done with my life? What do I have to show for it? Most things I have tried have not turned out.  I'm not famous, I'm not rich, I am not really successful in any way that the World promised me I could be.

But the issue is not that I'm a failure (again, it is The Issue, but that's for later), it's that I paid far too much attention to the lies of the world. The Cake is a LIE! There is no magic place in life where you get everything you want and are totally happy.  I would even go as far as to say that anyone who says they are perfectly happy with life is either a stinking liar or horribly deluded.

Here is a part of truth: You will never be completely happy in this life; you will never have everything you want; you will never feel totally fulfilled.

But you can be content. You just need to stop living trying to be the person the World told you that you could be, or even the person you want to be. Start figuring out who you should be.

You should be someone who loves God with everything you are.
You should be someone who loves others at least as much as you love yourself (hopefully more)
You should be someone who holds on to this world very loosely.
You should be someone who can accept that you aren't perfect, and while that isn't OK, it is reality. It is what everyone of us lives with every day.

The longer you spend denying it, the worse it gets.
So cut it out.