All Talk & No Action: The Dreamer's Destiny?

When you were little, what did you want to be when you grew up? I wanted to be an actress and a singer. What did you want to be around the time you finished high school? I wanted to be the Vice President of Marketing for a big technology company in Silicon Valley. Now, I've had dozens of additional half-baked business ideas with friends that never made it to the stage of writing a business plan. And plenty of ideas for parties and social gatherings, travels big and small - once, my friend and I even started to prepare her bamboo-rich backyard for our adoption of a baby panda from China! (We didn't know back then that adopting an exotic animal just meant sending money. Boo.) Not to mention daydreams of relationships that never worked out, my dream apartment and neighborhood that I never got to live in, and the list goes on.

The baby panda that we never adopted :(

The point is, I've had many dreams, big and small, which never saw the light of day, and I was inspired to write about this by an incredible song, 'Barbeque,' by the American jam band Animal Liberation Orchestra. Barbeque's insightful chorus sings: 

"Welcome to your barbeque, where you roast all the dreams that never came true.

Welcome to your barbeque. Pig out and dream anew."

All Talk & No Action

I was talking to a friend recently who told me that he has to stop himself from getting carried away with daydreaming about things he wants to plan and to accomplish, because many of the dreams he will never bring to life. I was a bit shocked, because I really enjoy this process of dreaming and getting excited about ideas, and I didn't understand why someone would want to starve himself of this pleasure. After talking a bit further, my friend admitted that some people in the past had accused him of being "all talk and no action," because he shared ideas with them that he never made steps toward achieving. Since then, he has shut down this dreamer part of himself and tries to make more practical plans. How sad, right?!

A few days ago I watched the movie, 'The Life of David Gale' (good movie!) in which Kevin Spacey's character quotes the great mathematician Pascal, "We are only truly happy when daydreaming about future happiness." Now, I think that Pascal took it a bit far here, and I do believe that we can achieve moments of true happiness while being fully in the present. But still, the man is onto something. It's FUN to dream, and I don't think we should ever feel guilty or make others feel guilty for doing it, nor should we try to stop ourselves or others from dreaming.

In the song 'Barbeque,' Animal Liberation Orchestra (ALO) sings, 

"As a way of getting us to move, life dangles your dreams in front of you, and unable to resist the temptation, we continue."

All the ideas in our heads are what gets us out of bed in the mornings, and without dreams we would quickly go into a downward spiral of purposelessness and feel 'stuck in a rut,' not a good place to be!

Letting Go

Sometimes all our ideas can feel heavy in our heads, and too many options can sometimes feel overwhelming and prevent us from choosing a path and taking it. That's why I love ALO's idea of letting go of past dreams to make space for new dreams. Maybe you saw a long future with a partner, and when you broke up you had to erase all the visions of little kiddos running around your backyard, or sitting on the porch and drinking tea together with white hair and frail bodies, as in love as they day you met. Maybe you saw a long prosperous future with a company you started working for, and when you lost or left the job, you had to wipe away all the dreams of the big office in the corner and the big raises year after year. 

The thing is, these kinds of changes happen all the time in life, and the sooner you can "roast all the dreams that never came true," the sooner you can "pig out and dream anew." If you feel like some of your old dreams are holding you back, I encourage you to make a list of all the dreams you've had in the past that still make you feel a pang of failure when you think about them. Take that list and hold a ceremonial barbeque with yourself (with or without real fire!), while listening to ALO's 'Barbeque' or another song that gives you the feeling of weightlessness and freedom, and set yourself free to dream big once again!

What dreams have you left behind, and how have you dealt with it? Do you feel bad when your dreams don't come to fruition or are you easygoing with letting them go and creating new dreams?