Inspirations & Connections | VII. Dreaming

Are you a dreamer? Or, like me, are you a terrible realist? Perhaps it's time to start embracing the seemingly tiny hopes and wishes which come to us each day? Can we find the magic that way?

Community, and creating a sense of community, is so important to me, and to the world. In this series, taking a particular theme, I want to share with you some of the inspirations, connections and other communities which have enriched my life, in the hope that they may do the same for you too.

---

Have you met Mrs Pew, who wanted to live on an avenue? Or perhaps you’ve met Pauline Park who wanted to be an invoice clerk? Maybe you’ve met Eileen Gum who wanted to to be ‘just a mum’?

The characters referred to in Victoria Wood’s deeply satirical song, Reincarnation, are probably more familiar than we might at first think. Perhaps we’ve met some of them, and maybe, just maybe, we see a little of ourselves in them?

You got to have a dream,
If you don't have a dream,
How you gonna have a dream come true?

So goes the song ‘Happy Talk’ in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s 1949 musical, South Pacific.

But are you a dreamer?

I don’t mean in the sense of dreaming at night, but I wonder if you dream about the future? Do you conjure up elaborate scenes in your head? Maybe the perfect country cottage in a little village, a wonderful holiday in a far-flung place, or a magical time spent with friends and family?

Dreaming can be a wonderful thing, but it should perhaps come with a health warning: your dreams may not come true. That sounds deeply depressing, but we all know deep down, our dreams our tinged with reality. For some of us, we are terrible realists, and that can make dreaming hard.

---

This Rediscover · Reconnect · Re-Emerge post is free to read; however, to dig deeper and access the full range of posts and resources, you can become a paid subscriber for just £4 a month, or £40 a year. Paid subscriptions help me to continue creating new content, affording me time and space to explore new ideas, and allow me to continue supporting others to do the same. Every paid subscription has a big impact.

---

When I was at school, we weren’t told we could be anyone we wanted to be, in fact, we weren’t encouraged to dream big. In our limited careers lessons, we were provided with a selection of leaflets about different careers, and encouraged to choose one which appealed to us. As I wrote in last week’s post, we were told to be realistic, because this was going to be the job and career which lasted our whole working life, and the one from which we would retire happily from at the appropriate time.

You see, dreaming doesn’t really come into that. We can go to a restaurant and dream about our favourite meal, but ultimately, we can only select from the menu in front of us. Just as when I was at school, our career was to be chosen from a menu, less with the hope we would enjoy it, but more that we would, at the very least, endure it.

I look back across my life and realise now that I have always found dreaming hard. I’m more than happy to think about the future, but it is tinged with a serious dose of reality. I will dream dreams, but only if they seem remotely possible.

Our materialistic society encourages us to dream of earning a lot of money, having a ‘good job’, a big house, expensive holidays, and designer clothes. We’ve all been guilty of looking to those at one time or another in our lives.

Clementine Barton

and I dream of a simple life, with a small cottage in the country, where we can life slowly and simply, growing our own food, and making as much as we can of all the world around us offers. In many respects, it’s a simple dream; we don’t really crave anything big or expensive, but does it make it any more realistic? Possibly not.

Even in our quest to enjoy the simple moments in life, to cherish the beautiful memories, and to dream big, reality can often be quite different. Social media is, in many respects, a wonderful thing, but we all know that on it, we see the best version of people’s lives. We don’t often see the struggles and the realities which were fought before the dream came true. We see the edited highlights, and I suspect that in many cases, it was never about one big dream, but lots of little hopes and wishes.

But that said, we can draw inspiration from those we follow online. It has been possible for them, and it can be possible for us. I realise that for many of you, I’m preaching to the converted. I know that lots of you are lovely big dreamers. I’d love to know your secret!

Learning to dream again when your life has been underpinned by a constant awareness of reality is hard. As I readily admit, I find dreaming difficult. Dreaming also requires risk. Are we risk takers? In some ways, dreaming is the harder of the two options. The other, to accept reality, is far easier. Dreaming of a slow and simple life, living in tune with nature, and alongside the cycle of the changing seasons, seems a fair enough ask. Perhaps my dream would be for more and more people to discover that there is another way, that craving the big and expensive, big dreams as they are, these will never be truly detached from reality.

If, like me, you find dreaming challenging, I wonder if we might embrace something smaller? To keep a note of those seemingly tiny hopes and wishes. At the end of the day, much is out of our hands, but nevertheless, I think we can still enjoy those moments where we think about the future, the things which might be.

Perhaps the dear old Psammead had the right idea:

Try wishing, a little harder every day
Wishing, to chase the clouds away
In the twinkling of an eye
You’ll grow tall or even fly
You don’t know until you try, so do
And with the magic that you find
Dream your dream away.

---

If you’re not already doing so, I’d love you to follow me over on Instagram. You can also visit the A Life More Creative website, where you can find out more about My Story, and read articles from my online Journal. Subscribe on Substack to receive new posts and to support my work: