It was a dream of my mother’s to make it across the big blue ocean to see what lies on the other side, “one day”. At 70 years of age, she still had not created an opportunity to go on her own and I believe, had given up the dream. She ran a business for over 30 years. She kept a nice home. She raised children. She took time out of her life for absolutely everyone who needed something. But after 70 years, this selfless person still hadn’t taken the time for herself to go do something that she wanted. She hadn’t dreamed her reality.
How many of us sit down and think about all the dreams we dream but never take the time to attain? How many places on this earth have we wished we could visit, but never put that first dollar down towards it? How many of us spend more time wishing and dreaming than we do planning and saving? At some point in our lives, likely all of us. We see others do things, but cannot imagine that reality for us. It’s too big, too scary or too much. For me, it was the price tag and fear of traveling somewhere “big”. Though I noticed others were able to fly across the world and it was never a big deal. Some of those people did it every year. So what was our hang up? Eventually the fear outweighed the ability to make a plan and follow through.
The levity of this had hit me a few years back. It was time to do more than just wish and dream! I began with a little bit of research online and found out exactly how much it cost to travel across the big blue sea. I found places to go, things to see, people to meet and things to learn. And surprisingly, it did have an actual price tag instead of a big scary cloud over it that said “too much, you’ll never go”. A hard, fast price trumped all of my excuses and changed my perspective on the dream. Time had gone by and it wasn’t the money holding me up, it was the idea that the money would be “too much”. I hid behind a price tag instead of saying “I just can’t imagine it”. It changed the dream into a reality.
So I put the dream into a savings jar instead of a wish. Little by little, the distance between reality and a price tag got smaller and smaller as I got closer and closer to the number in my head that had been putting things off. It took the wish for my mother to be able to see the things she wanted to see in order for both of our dreams to become reality. It took a wish of hers for me to break down that barrier of fear that kept us from doing the things we wanted to do. The things we dreamed about.
Finally, we stopped dreaming about it. At seventy years of age, she took the trip of a lifetime and I was lucky enough to be a part of it. We experienced serious jet lag for the first time. We stepped our feet onto foreign soil. We drank in the sights and sounds and flavors of a foreign land. We crossed the big blue ocean and found our reality on the other side. Fears subsided. The strangest part to me, was that the difficulty wasn’t that great once we decided it was going to happen. And all it took was the simple decision to stop dreaming and take an action.
If you are holding back in life, dreaming of things you think you’ll never do, maybe it’s time you ask yourself “why?”. Is it the money? The fear? The failure? Or is that you just haven’t decided that you’re going to do this, and looked a way to make it happen? What I’ve learned through this experience is that life is meant to be lived. If you’re holding back from your dreams becoming a reality, it’s time for you to take the trip, live that dream and stop being your own worst enemy.
Dream your own reality, and take your mom on the trip of a lifetime. It will change you forever.
