There are so many possibilities inherent in this eight letter word.
I might conjure up something that I greatly fantasized about when I was much younger.
You might entertain the thought of having indulged in a long held desire to achieve a goal. I’m curious though, do we as Baby Boomers still allow ourselves to continue to indulge in dreaming as we age? This question came to mind recently after innocently overhearing a conversation while dining out. Seriously, I never meant to intrude.
There was a lovely older couple enjoying a meal at the next table. They were enthusiastically chatting over a glass of wine and their positive energy was simply contagious. I wanted to just pull up a chair, but alas I am able stop myself from being that intrusive. Sometimes.
Instead, it was easy enough to hear them excitedly discussing plans for a cruise. They used the word “dream” often and that’s what sparked my curiosity about my own ability to dream my world into being.
Before getting any further on with this story, let’s take a second to focus on the use of the word itself in its forms as a noun and a verb.
I love to dig deep into the use of the English language and so here’s my take on dreaming and to dream from my vantage point of 70 years.
As young children, dreaming was often spoken of after waking from a terrifying “bad dream.” Kids are always highly sensitive to sensory input and Lord knows, back in the 50’s through late 60’s there was lots of scary stuff that contributed to fears without our parents even realizing we were adversely impacted.
Case in point for me was looking up at the sky at age 8, hearing a plane overhead, wondering if it might’ve been in our area to drop bombs on us. This reference is to the Cuban Missile crisis from back in the day.
In school, that’s what we were told and why we had to have drills where we hid under our desks or covered our heads in the school hallway. No one was really explaining much to us. And so…we conjured up scary thoughts and processed the possible outcomes in our dream states at night.
Conversely, the idea “to dream” was much more docile and embracing as we became adults. We began to understand the concept of anticipation and then reward from the process of dreaming as we planned our weddings or for the purchase of that new house.
This brings me back to the original question of dreaming.
Do we allow ourselves to dream now the way we used to?
Might the concerns about health issues contribute to anxieties that seep into our dreams?
Do we tend to live in fear of the future and disregard the possibilities of what a new chapter could mean for us?…Sit a moment and consider this important question.
Just for argument's sake, let’s consider dreaming about the prospect of what you’d like your world to look like in 6 months from now.
Imagine it, see it, focus on your place in that future world.
Have some fun with the ideas that come to mind. Create as positive an outcome as you can in this day dream and drift into the possibility of holding that vision. This creates a barrier preventing anxieties to seep in, especially catching you off guard at inopportune moments.
Best of all, perhaps during those nights when sleep eludes you, you can pick up on that idea and dream bigger than you even imagined. Not from a place of worry but to a night time dream state that takes you on an enjoyable journey.
Okay, back to the couple at the next table before I conclude.
I actually learned something that I hadn’t even considered as an essential part of the story that added another terrific element to all this eavesdropping.
This couple focused on contributing to their final decision by meeting each other halfway as they shared their plans, their hopes and dreams. Combining their individual dreams about their goal for this cruise made it easier to finalize their resolution to book the trip that they had been dreaming of.
So my final takeaway was this. Dreaming is still a very important component of living our best lives as we age….sharing that dream makes it so much more tangible when we do so with family or friends.
Sometimes we can learn a lot from others especially when we’re in the right place at the right time. I called it fate. My husband called it snooping. We compromised and I paid the bill for dinner.
Pat Larsen lives, works and plays in Greene County NY with her husband, Christian of 50 years and their pup, Lily.
Pat is a syndicated columnist. She just published her first book of stories and musings under the title of Reflections…Anything But an Ordinary Life, available on Amazon.com.
Pat can be contacted at 518-275-8686 to chat.
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