"Living the Dream"

In my work as a SSA hearing reporter, I sometimes travel to remote hearing sites.  At those hearing sites, the applicant (claimant) and sometimes the lawyer appear at the remote site and we video-conference with the administrative law judge and expert witness and hold their appeal hearing.

At remote sites, the protocol is a bit different in that I have my own guard.  There is always a security risk when you are alone in a room with a stranger who might or might not be adversarial, so the guard is to protect and watch and hopefully their presence will prevent something bad from happening.

Anyway, I tell you this to introduce my latest thoughts on living.  There is a certain guard who has a creative answer when someone asks him how he is doing.  He answers, "I am living the dream."  He smiles as he says it, making you believe all is wonderful in his world.

I have heard his response so many times that lately one question floods into my thoughts and I want to ask him:  Whose dream are you living?

That question leads to another question:  And is that dream a pleasant dream or a nightmare?

I have a plaque that I have placed in our home and I look at it every day.  It says, "Live the life you have imagined."

Those two phrases, "Living the dream" and "Live the life you have imagined" have been ruminating inside my head now for months.

I challenged myself in the last few years to think about my life.   I have been speaking to my therapist, analyzing thoughts and motives, responses and choices.  I share my inner thoughts with a few chosen friends.  I have looked  back as far as I remember as well as to everything in the present days and what fell  between.  I have brainstormed, delved deep inside my motives and heart and processed in journals in order to reflect.  

As I have reflected upon my past, I asked myself:  What was the life I imagined myself living way back when my Cousin Becca and I were playing "secretary" or "library" on those many afternoons of imaginative play?  (Okay, we won't go into how we wore leotards on our heads in order to have long flowing hair at the time; or how we used index cards and made up our own Dewey decimal  system for our "library".) 

However, that question led me to the next question:  What is the life I now dream of living?

Which led to the next question:  Am I living that life and if not, what is it going to take to begin?

Sometimes our childhood dreams, innocent and pure, get hijacked.  They get hijacked by the expectations of others, the fear that dwells inside us,  the "oughts, musts or shoulds" that have been self-imposed or imposed by others , or dreams are limited by the resources that are available in our young lives.  Sometimes we don't trust ourselves in order to put one foot in front of the other to begin living out the dream.  Sometimes we feel it's easier to live out someone else's dream.

Now as an adult with a few years under my sandals, I see how the effects of my past choices affect my choices in the here and now.  If I let them, unrealized or half-lived dreams can affect my new dream positively or negatively.  It depends on the power and focus that I give to them.  The present dream, the life I imagine, is how I am living the here and now.  There is freedom in realizing that I have the power not only to dream and to imagine, but to LIVE the dream in my head.  Yes, there will be outside influences and circumstances that affect my dream, but the person steering the sailboat is me.  I choose to put the sails up or take them down, when to jibe and when to float along in the sea of life.   It's taken me a long time to realize that I am responsible for whose dream I am living.   I am responsible for making that dream a positive one or a living nightmare.  I am the creator and "imaginator" of the dream.  It's up to me to do the hard work not only to choose, but to live the dream I imagined.