Yesterday I came across a picture that said, “A single dream is more powerful than a thousand realities.” My first response was to write a detailed breakdown of why not all dreams come true and that we need to face our realities. As I read back my angry paragraphs full of disillusionment and skepticism, I discovered how sad my mindset was. Yes, not all dreams come true, but why should I scoff at those who hold out hope? Maybe my frustration wasn’t out of an altruistic wish for people not to get hurt by an unachieved dream, but rather from a pain of realizing that I give up on dreams when others don’t.
How do you protect yourself from being pierced to the core while still seeking after your deepest hopes? How do you keep your faith from being shaken when a God that can do the impossible chooses not to? It’s hard. There’s no way around it. Sometimes you’ll press on through years of anguish as you believe in something to happen and then find it seems your only reward is to press on through more years of letting your dream go. You’ll find that it’s not that encouraging to hear that your journey made you stronger when you know how weak it made you first.
Still, we must keep dreaming. We must keep dreaming because the disappointments we’ll have may injure us, but we control if they destroy us. We must keep dreaming because we may be inspiring people with the same dream as us, and their dream will come true even when ours does not. We must keep dreaming because sometimes the reality that replaces our dream really isn’t that bad after all. We must keep dreaming because the very dream itself may be the only piece of what we want that we’ll ever have. Never be ashamed of a dream. Never hate yourself for wanting to give up. As precious as your dream may be, the most valuable thing is you.
By The Grace of Chocolate Go I 