Dreams

Building Dreams

/ Tim / 2 Comments

I recently read a book that lead me to watch a documentary on the building of Sagrada Familia, the famous cathedral being built in Barcelona, Spain. As I looked at the structure, the columns, the soaring spaces within and the pinnacles without I couldn’t help but wonder what might the thoughts of its creator architect, Antoni Gaudi, have been as he was dreaming it up. Did he imagine when he was first putting his pencil to paper that the building would take well over a century to complete? That he would never live to see it done? That the plans would be destroyed along the way and others would have to interpret how he intended it to look? That money would have to be raised not from within the church but from private funding in order to build it? If he had focused on that, the first shovel full of dirt wouldn’t have ever been removed. Is the end result of the cathedral, which is scheduled to be finished in 2026 going to be exactly like Gaudi envisioned? No. Along the course of construction materials had to be changed, technologies changed and innumerable things had to be reinterpreted. That doesn’t make the results any less spectacular. Even in its unfinished state, it attracts millions of visitors every year who marvel at the results of Gaudi’s vision.

It’s so easy to be negative, a pessimist, or a party-pooper. I can always look around and find things that are wrong or aren’t going well. I’m not sure why. When someone is positive and bright about the possibilities of the future there always seems to be someone who will say they ‘aren’t being realistic’. Why do we consider that the negative result of something we’re working toward is more real than the positive? Why is failure more ‘real’ than success? Why do so many people think that it’s unrealistic to have an attitude that things are going to work out?

I think it has to do with expectations. In life there are many variables and few guarantees. The pessimist loves to focus on those, the things that ‘might go wrong’, the people who will ‘let us down’, and all of the possible things that might fall short of the ‘perfect’ result. I’m coming to learn that it’s the ‘process’ that is the important part of anything we do, not the results that matter. Another way of looking at the saying: “It’s the journey not the destination that matters.” Life consists in meeting the challenges and solving the problems that we face, not lamenting that the path is uneven and rocky.

We need dreams in order to move forward. We need to focus on our visions of what can be and work toward those things. We live and work in the present to make those dreams a reality. The pessimist and the party-pooper often don’t even begin a project because the results might not be exactly as they expected they should be. Push ahead. Today’s dreams will only ever become tomorrow reality if I work toward them.

Dream

/ Tim / Leave a comment

A dream is your creative vision for your life in the future. You must break out of your current comfort zone and become comfortable with the unfamiliar and the unknown. -Denis Waitley

Dream! Plan! See a future that you want for yourself! What are your hopes and aspirations? What are your goals? Where would you like to see yourself in five years? Ten years?

What? You don’t see it as possible? Then you haven’t looked around you. Miracles happen, wishes come true and dreams are realized because people make them. I sit in a room full of people who had no dreams and little hope and here they are clean and sober and living lives beyond their wildest imagination. I can read online everyday success stories of people who came out of abject poverty and yet created a completely new world for themselves. The skyscraper you see glittering in the sun or the castle overlooking the valley were once dreams in the minds of their creators that have now been realized.

Not possible for you? Then you don’t know the process for fulfilling a dream. As addicts and alcoholics we spent hours solving the problems of the world and sharing with everyone who had the patience to hear what we might have done and what we were going to do. Unfortunately we never picked ourselves out of the gutter or got off of the barstools to make those ideas come true. We came back to the same place day after day and said the same things over and over again. If we do thing same things we get the same results. No one has ever married the person of their dreams, bought a house on a tropical island, written a book or fulfilled any dream by sitting on the barstool. You have to step away from what is and walk towards what can be.

Fulfilling a dream takes work. It takes patience. It takes humility. People often tell me that they wish they could live in the rainforest near the ocean as I do. I tell them that they can do so if they want to. “It’s not impossible.” They reply that they can’t, they have a job and family and a mortgage. What they are really saying is that they don’t want to risk a change of what they have to get what they want. They might like the idea of stepping out of their comfort zone, but they really don’t want to make the necessary changes. They don’t want to do the work needed or the time to do it so it’s all really just pie in the sky. What they are really dreaming about is finding a genie in a bottle or a visit from their fairy godmother.

“The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” Chinese proverb.

I’ve learned in my program of recovery to enjoy the moment, live in the present and trust the process. And I can still dream. I am learning not to live in the future, rather work toward it. If I want a sober and clean life it begins one day at a time and gradually the days begin to add up. At first it’s difficult. It’s change from the norm and out of my comfort zone.  With the Twelve Steps, it gets easier. I have to do the work. My dreams are the same. I have to work at them. I have to take that first step toward them today and another step tomorrow. And it all starts by stepping off the stool.

Live Life!

/ Tim / 2 Comments

“What if you don’t like your path?”

“Then it’s not your path.”

Jed McKenna,  Dreamstate: A Conspiracy Theory

I remember when I was a kid there was a great emphasis on finishing what you had started. Even if you didn’t like it, you stuck with it because that is what you were ‘supposed’ to do. Quitting part way through was the lazy way out, a defect of character. This went for college course choices, job choices and relationship choices. Once you committed to something, you couldn’t change course.  Stiff upper lip and all that!

I couldn’t disagree more today!

How many people are working at jobs they detest? Are going through the motions in a relationship that no longer fulfills? Living in conditions that are sapping them of their life blood? What good does it do you to keep climbing the corporate ladder when you find that the ladder is propped up onto the wrong wall?

Life is too short. It’s too short to be working at a job you detest, living where you aren’t comfortable and being with the wrong person. To everything there is a season. And when the season ends it’s time to move on. And there’s a lid for every pot; if the lid isn’t fitting, then change lids.

When I look at my life before recovery and now, I see a colossal difference. When I came into the meeting rooms I was at my bottom. I was living in the metaphoric dungeon of life and my addiction kept me in chains. The miracle of recovery showed me that the chains were of my own making and they weren’t locked. The trap door from the dungeon was unbolted and there was a ladder out. According to the old philosophy, I made my bed, now I must lie in it. The goal, I discovered isn’t to “make the best of it” it’s to leave the dungeon all together!

Any change can be very stressful. Because of this some prefer to stay in the dungeon because they ‘know’ it. Some fear what might happen if they do leave. What if they fail? What if they don’t like it? So they sell their health and peace of mind for the sense of security of a job or a relationship or an addiction that is robbing them of really living life.

Again I say, life is short and you’ll be dead for a lot more years than you ever lived. No one on their deathbed wishes they could have spent more time at the office. Get out there!  Try different things! Take some risks! Change the path you’re on if it’s not your path. You don’t get out of here alive, so make sure that you’ve lived while you were here.