4 Almost Impossible Dreams You Should Never Give Up On
By Leigh Newman
1. The Dream of the (Tiny Little) Thing You Were Meant to Do
Look, we all know what I was meant to do: sing jazz in a Paris club (except that I can't sing) or write a novel (except I tried that--it didn't work) or become a large-animal country vet (except I'm too old to go to vet school, and also word on the street has it that it's harder to get into vet school than medical school). At times, the big yucky struggle of our life direction and purpose (which, by the way, is the most important struggle in our lives) is just too big and yucky to contemplate. Take a day off. Figure out the tiny little thing you were meant do.
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My friend Rachel was meant to dance in nightclubs. At age 42, she goes out once a week and shakes it until 3 a.m. in Minneapolis. My friend Marie was meant to look at paintings and just walk around admiring them on her Saturdays off. My mother was meant to take hot baths with scented candles. (Not just everybody can do this either; I find hot baths scalding, confining and panic-inducing.) Find your one tiny little thing and make it a big part of your existence.
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2. The Dream of Having a Child in Your Life
Nobody wants to talk about this. It's too sensitive. It's too personal. It's too painful. But just about everybody has some version of these thoughts: You couldn't have a child, or you could, but you didn't find the right partner to have a child with. Or you had a child but wanted more and couldn't afford them. Or you had a child but wanted more but got divorced. Or you had a child, but something awful and life-rending happened (see Lorrie Moore's A Gate at the Stairs. Or--and in my humble opinion, this is the most heartbreaking--you didn't think that with your problems or your history or your hang-ups, you had much to offer a child.
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Of course, there are exceptions to what I'm about to say, but for the 98 percent of us who are not violent or creepy or legally insane (yes, I made up this statistic), you have something that a child not only will find instructive or beguiling but also needs. It will be the neighbor's kid or your granddaughter or your niece or the sullen teenager who works at the corner store who you befriend after catching him stealing whipped cream canisters for use in mind-altering activities, and you'll say: "Hey, I used to do stuff like that too. And by the way, it never produced any kind of long-lasting happiness. Whereas bike riding or building geeky but awesome rockets with you in the park..."
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3. The Dream of Universal Free Umbrellas
Imagine a world where, in front of every house and store and school and office building, there stood a bucket of free, unbreakable umbrellas. Should the clouds roll in and the first plops of rain splatter on your head of carefully negotiated hair, you--and everyone else in the world--could simply grab one these sturdy, protective items, open it and relax on the way to your job interview or first date. Should the sun peek out two hours later, you could drop off said umbrella in the nearest available bucket--and walk on. The reason why you must have faith? Similar programs have been done with bicycles to great success. Both items have spokes...that's all I'm saying.
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4. The Dream of Feeling Good in the Morning
For most of us, getting out of bed each morning after age 27 is physically uncomfortable--not in a massive, disease-riddled or car accident kind of way. We're just overweight and out of breath. We're relatively thin but with throbbing joint pain. We get soul-crushing headaches due to stress or break out in hives due to some as-yet-undiagnosed allergy. Furthermore, none of us are doing much about it. We've been to see doctors, herbalists, acupuncturists and weird cultish healers that scared the heck out of us. Note to us (me included, due to my back problems and bad diet): You're not done until you feel good. Get back in the game. Quit, find, solve whatever so relentlessly ails you.
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KEEP READING: 5 More Almost Impossible Dreams You Should Never Give Up On
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