Remember
when we were young? C’mon! You know? Back when we knew everything and every dream
we could dream was absolutely achievable? Simply put: The world was all ours for the
taking and, by golly, we were going to take it!
I
dreamed BIG dreams and believed that each and every one of them was achievable. I dreamed of big, awe-inspiring
jobs and accomplishments with lots of status. That lead, of course, to dreams of big houses and other material
perks of success.
I didn’t
just dream about success. I pursued it via the paths that I thought would surely lead to it, looking to
the examples of others who achieved similar success as my iconic guides. I won’t go into those dreams
in this piece. They will, no doubt, be fodder for other articles at other times. But,
needless to say, the majority of those dreams didn’t turn in to reality.
Am I whining about that? Not today, but in times past I
did. Today, to quote “Hand of the King”, I believe that, while I’ll find sit in my “glorious
seat among the stars” sometime in eternity, I believe that I’m more successful by a definition more substantive
than the material one I subscribed to in younger years.
To
arrive at this point of satisfaction at this late stage in my life, it took the utter destruction of my (sometimes) well thought
out and detailed dreams (plural). To have A dream destroyed is bad enough. To have more
than one dream destroyed can be devastating and lead one to never want, or be able, to dream again. It
brings to mind another line from the song, “Hand of the King”:
Look at me, on my knees
You’ve made me forget my dreams
. . .
As I’ve alluded to in past articles, my wife and I
experienced the “perfect storm” of events. That storm destroyed a major dream that was years
in the making and kicked all of the emotional crutches and defense mechanisms that we typically relied on away from us.
People who we thought were good friends
were not only nowhere to be found but they betrayed us in the most hurtful of ways. And those people were
people that we went to church with! They shunned us at church and some even openly ridiculed us in public.
The core values, character and integrity of both my wife and I were maligned.
Two things during this time hurt and hurt deeply. Was it
the fact that our “brothers and sisters” in the faith betrayed us? Sure, that hurt but, hey,
they’re as horribly flawed and imperfect as I am so what can I say? So, yeah, my faith in man was
horribly shaken but not my faith in God.
No,
what really hurt first was that my lovely wife was being smeared and hurt by this trial and I was powerless to protect her.
Second, I suddenly found myself for the first time in my life unable to dream any dreams that would inspire me to action
that would pull us out of that hole.
That
second point, for me, was the emotional equivalent of free-falling without a parachute on my back or a safety net to catch
me. I felt like the cartoon character, Tooter Turtle, who, when catching himself in a horrible situation
in some time-traveling event, would cry out, “Help, Mr. Wizard!” ‘Cept, the thing was,
I couldn’t hear any wizard say, “Drizzle, Drazzle, Drozzle, Drone. Time for this one to come
home!
That period
of time in our life was, undoubtedly, the darkest we have yet experienced. And, yet, while I hope to never
repeat that experience, I wouldn’t trade having endured it for anything in the world.
I know what you’re thinking. “Spock!
Are you out of your Vulcan mind?!”
Probably.
However, the trial by fire refined us in ways we didn’t realize we needed. The result was
a truing of our compass that was slightly out of calibration. Priorities are different and my definition of success
and how it's measured is different, too.
Slowly
but surely life started to be a lot less painful and our fortunes turned around. The fickle friends never
returned but, then again, we didn't invite them back.
Also, I found that dreams can be dreamed again, with greater clarity and stronger
foundations than before, making them more obtainable and, once obtained, enjoyable and meaningful.
We also learned to rely more strongly on the strong, right
and steady Hand of the King.
Watch the stars as they align,
Yeah! Watch the stars as they align!
At last I’ll cry “This world
is mine!’
