A Kid's Dream

Hey everyone. It’s been a while since my last post. As usual my only excuse is that I have been quite busy. Amongst the Web work, Jazz Guitar Life interviewing/reviewing, Internet Marketing and whatever else, I have also started teaching Guitar at a private Music School which I find really enjoyable ’cause I’m giving back in a small way…but dang does it keep me busy. That being said, I am very grateful that I can do this alongside everything else. Which brings me to this post: Dream like a kid. Hmmmm…what exactly does that mean? Well, I’ll tell ya.

About ten years ago I began a journey to change parts of my life that I felt needed change to make me a happier and more fulfilled person. It was a few days after my mother had passed away, and as I was sitting in her soon to be empty apartment, I started to think about her and the times we had together. At some point it dawned on me that even though I knew her as “mom”, I didn’t know her as “Christine”. I had no clue what her youth was like, except for a few snippets of stories she told me when I was young. I started wondering if she ever got close to any of the dreams she had as a child or teen. Did she dream of being a Ballerina? Did she want to be the first woman Prime Minister? What was it that she thought she would end up being? Or maybe she didn’t have any dreams. Maybe she was too busy working at a young age to help her mom with a family of twelve children. I began to think about how she felt during the last days of her life and while she showed no outward signs of regret, who knows what was going on in her head.I walked away from her apartment a changed man. I no longer wanted to accept my position in life. I wanted to break free and be the man I envisioned myself to be oh so many years ago. But how? That answer would come to me soon enough.

A few months later I was sitting in a therapists office looking at an empty chair and a rug. I had been to a couple of therapists over the years for certain answers to questions I had of myself. If you have never gone to a therapist, you should give it a shot. It doesn’t mean that you are crazy or cannot make your own decisions in life. It is actually quite empowering and allows you to see yourself through the analytical and disciplined eye of another. Plus, it’s cool to talk about yourself without someone cutting in every few seconds…:)

Anyhoo, so there I was in the therapists office, just chillin’ and drinking tea, when she asked me to get out of the chair and stand on the small rug in front of the chair. I did, silently wondering what the heck was going on. Then she asked me to address the chair picturing my present self sitting there. I laughed out loud a little until I saw that she wasn’t joking…so I did. She then asked me to draw forth the person I was when I was sixteen and to talk to my present self. If this sounds kinda like new agey crap, believe me, it isn’t. What happened in the next few minutes changed my life as the sixteen year old me began to ask my present self “why I hadn’t stuck to the plan”? “How did you let me become this”? I asked sadly pointing to the vision of my present self sitting in the empty chair. The plan was, by the way, to become a great Guitar Player and to have my life’s mission revolve around music. “So what happened?” “How did our dream disappear?” “Was I happy with my life as it was?”

These were very hard questions to answer and as I sat back down to respond to my younger self I began to cry. I realized that I let my young self down. I did not become the man I wanted to become. Soon the session ended and I was told that that was the last session. I made some real progress that day in addressing issues that had been welling up inside me for some time and now it was time for me to get back to my young self and work things out. Which I eventually did.

Up to that point I had pretty much given up on music and hadn’t played in a band for at least 15 years. I worked menial jobs or self-deflating office jobs throughout those years leaving me little time to play Guitar, and even as a Graduate Student, which I enjoyed immensely, I somehow felt that this life wasn’t for me. I spent a lot of time reflecting and even took out old pictures of myself when I was a kid and young man playing guitar and I started to feel that energy again. I started getting excited about things again. Silly things like Rock Concerts which I hadn’t gone to in many a year. Soon I was auditioning for bands and playing again. Of course I still needed an income, but instead of looking for yet another crappy, non-creative job I decided to look into myself to see what it is I felt excited about and would love to do. Being a Rock Star was out of the question, for that moment anyway…:) so I took my passion for computers and the Internet and decided that I wanted to design websites, where I could retain a creative energy while working from home. And I did it. As mentioned in a previous post, it was hard at first and there were moments where I questioned my career choice, but soon I was ok, and then a little better, and then a lot better. Ten years later I’m making a nice living from being creative and I am playing in a killer Classic Rock Band while also working on a solo Jazz CD which should hopefully be done by early in the new year. Is life good? YES! Is my younger self still upset with me? NOPE! Actually, we have merged quite nicely, and I now live my life more like a teenager than a 47 year old…well…within reason anyway and without the acne…:)

Well, I didn’t mean to go on so much about myself. The point of all this is to never stop dreaming like a kid. Of course, life gets in the way and we sometimes stray down a path that we may not want to be on. Are you living the life you really wanted when you were young? Are you living someone else’s life, fulfilling another’s expectations? What would you say to your younger self and, more importantly, what would they say to you? If you look back into your younger days and revisit your hopes and dreams, no matter how silly or impractical, I have no doubt that you too will begin to ask questions about why you are, where you are, in life.

This avenue of rediscovery doesn’t mean that you should leave your wife for a high school cheerleader, if that was one of your dreams, or that you quit your job to learn drums again. But what it does mean is that you no longer have to suppress your youthful ambitions.You can reevaluate your life and maybe there’s a chance to rekindle an old passion or two. Did you always want to become a veterinarian but never figured out how? Were you considered a good writer or artist when you were young but gave it up because all of a sudden after high school you had bills to pay and a mouth or two to feed? Technology and the Internet make many things possible these days, allowing us to achieve greater goals than we ever could “back in the day”. There is so much out there for us to grab onto that the World has once again become our Oyster.Youth can finally not be wasted on the young as we re-energize our hopes and dreams. In essence, dreaming like a kid!

So un-bottle that passion and have a talk with your younger self, you may be surprised by what he or she says. Take care and all the best.

Oh…and for those who never gave up on their childhood dreams and who are living their lives with purpose and fun…how’s that working out for ya? It’s wonderful…I know…:)