Humanity is infinitely fascinating to me. One thing I think about often is how different each of our individual hopes and dreams and “best lives” are. There are things that are so essential to me as a part of my best day and best life that it seems unfathomable that those things are not at the core of everyone’s dreams.
I of course understand that we want different things. I logically know that there are city mice and country mice, bon vivants and lovers of a simple life, sporty spices and musical mikes, and of course every person is multi-faceted so they exist in multiple spheres with multiple dreams. I can understand that someone who wants to surf everyday likely does not have dreams of a pied-à-terre in Paris and the future Fortune 500 CEOs maybe don’t want to have a B&B in upstate New York (or maybe they do).
But don’t we all think that our dreams are kind of the best? Like if everyone saw what we saw and thought it was possible, they would want it too?
All I know, is that I am so thankful that we don’t. It reminds me that the pie is big enough - we can all go after what we want. Not only will we each put own our spin on anything, our friends and neighbors literally do not want the same things as us. No one is a threat to getting what we want except ourselves and not trying.
I know I can’t wait for a boat ride and sunset cruise launched off the dock of my friend’s future house in Tahoe. And to gab and linger at another friend’s standing table on Saturday’s in Malibu where she and her husband regularly host friends. I love going to one friend’s restaurant & seeing her in her (one of many) element; I love talking to & supporting another friend as she is going back to work after years at home with her kids. I can’t wait to visit my friend abroad if she and her family do decide to take a year or two in new country and new environment. It fills me up talking to a friend and helping serve as a sounding board as she is building her dream company. I’m excited to collect eggs from the chickens and then make breakfast with my friend’s kids when I visit their dreamy farm kitchen. And this just a sampling of vastly different dreams amongst I would say fairly similar people overall.
Years ago I was a very regular listener of The Tim Ferriss Show, and one of my favorite episodes was with Debbie Millman. In this episode, she described an exercise for “Your Ten-Year Plan for a Remarkable Life.” As I was listening, I was fascinated - rewinding to write down her instructions, noting the timestamp and relistening to make sure I got it just right. She instructed you to write down, in detail, a perfect day in your life, from sun-up to sun-down, 10 years in the future. Here are more details of the exercise, as well as aforementioned timestamps, etc. If you haven’t done this - or even if you have and it has been a while - I highly recommend it!
I love vision board exercises and taking time to put in real thoughts about big dreams. I’m still maybe fumbling around in the making them all happen part, but hey, that’s part of it, right? I am actually glad I pulled this back up - I forgot about the re-read once a year. Maybe that is my missing piece. :)
When we dream big, of course there are misses along the way. There are times we veer off course — sometimes we go back, and more often than not that new course takes us to new dreams. But as there are misses, there are also those dreams we make reality, and better yet, those we far surpass. Those things we have done and seen and experiences lived, successes we have had that once we could have never imagined.
I hope we are all dreaming and scheming with wild abandon - and then we get to visit each other in those worlds. What a great way to experience even more - our dreams and the dreams of those we love. Especially since we know no two dreams are alike.
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