You Shouldn’t Always Follow Your Dreams. But You Should Face Them

I bet you’re not an astronaut. Or a pop star. Or a race car driver.

So what did you want to be when you grew up?

For many of us, dreams were just that: dreams. We never really believed we were going to be pirates or actors. They were just fantasy.

But for those who felt a calling, their dreams were a north star. Something to shoot for.

And while you might be jealous of those who knew what they wanted to be from a young age, that’s not the whole story.

It turns out a generation of people raised on the idea they can be anything have a lot to live up to.

The problem with dreams

Too many of us keep our dreams on the back-burner. We put them off, reassuring ourselves, our inner child, that we’ll deal with them tomorrow when the timing is better.

But do this for long enough, and you’ll miss the chance. The freedoms you had as a 20-something adult erodes into a committed 30-something and then an obligated 40-something. Excuses pile up.

It’s easy to remove a wisdom tooth in your 20s. The roots are shallow. The jaw bone’s looser. But by 50 it’s locked in. The bone is set. Roots run deep. It can still come out, but the damage will be greater. And the recovery is not so straightforward. There’s a higher risk of permanent injury. Side-effects. Death.

And so it is with dreams.

Never say never. But as you get older the risk gets greater. You’ve probably built a safe life. It has its blessings, but it’s not what you dreamt of.

Now you’re the bitter elder. You’ve found success in something that wasn’t your dream. You either openly realise this, and resent the job / your life / yourself for getting stuck. Or you deny it and try to tell yourself this new life is your real dream.

The problem is nobody can really know but you. And if you’re not honest, you may find some happiness, but you’ve not reconciled it.

And if you are honest? Well then life’s going to be a slog. It’s not romantic to be a ‘could have been’, especially if deep down you believe you were a ‘should have been’. Because that should is a big index finger pointing right at you, letting you know whose fault it is.

You must face your dreams.

You can’t keep saying ‘I would have been XXX, if only it wasn’t for XXX’ because:

It cheapens the work of others who did what you’re claiming you could have done if you’d tried
It’s a lie — you’ve absolutely no way of knowing
And because you’ve no way of knowing, you’ve formulated some inner trauma about both how destined you were to be this thing (that you’d likely identified with but never realised), or that it was taken from you by circumstance (belittling the life and achievements you did make despite them not being your main dream)

The only person you’ll hurt is yourself.