Trust - Part 3

(Part 3)

I wasn't planning a third part, but somehow these thoughts didn't get out between the posts last night..... and when you wake up with the words swirling around in your soul to where you can't easily get back to sleep....... you have to get them out.

What makes our dreams so precious that we guard them with our lives, intentionally forget about them, allow them to become our obsession, and let them be our driving force at various moments each day?

Our dreams are our deepest, most vulnerable, items that belong solely to us.

Our children do not. Our lovers and partners do not, nor do our friends. They all have their independence and ultimately, their own destinies they have to create.

But our dreams and goals are solely ours to create, develop, and execute. Granted, we can build dreams together with others - both friends, business associates, and lovers/partners - but there are those that are just singularly ours, even if they involve others to achieve.

They are reflections of our character, of who we are at the end of the day when no one is watching - because these dreams were built in our solitude, our long nights of not sleeping, the hopes and plans generated when we sat alone and pieced back together the shattered parts of our lives so that we could motivate ourselves to go one more hour, by hour, on our worst days.

They are our deepest aches - which reflect our most tender vulnerabilities - and exposing those to many is not something we are comfortable doing. It takes bravery to place those deepest, most personal things, inside the hands and minds of another human - for rejection and mishandling of those words and concepts is one of the deepest hurts we can inflict on someone we love.

Unhealed people cut those around them that have done nothing to deserve it - and when we unintentionally (or worse, fully understanding how we are defeating their spirits) take scalpels to those we love, and their trusted moments of sharing those vulnerable spaces that hold their dreams - we continue the cycle of pain and damage and extend it past ourselves to those we say we care about.

The world does enough each day to smack us around, beat us down and drain us of the energy needed to keep dreaming. We should not be adding to that destructive cycle.

Some of us had years of such disappointment that we stopped dreaming entirely. The dreams we had mustered up in our youth, buried deep in the shadows of our memory - far enough away that we could struggle to ever find them again because being numb was far safer than dreaming and never being able to move it forward because of our current situations.

Locked away and cold for years, it took someone speaking life into us - someone that had healed themselves over their episodes of hurt and pain and shattering - to revive those memories and spark the flame of passionate drive to accomplish them again.

That is why we turn the mirror to ourselves and ensure that we are not still cutting others unintentionally. How can we say we are friends when we chide another's character by rejecting their dreams?

They can be absolutely menial to us - perhaps they are simple - like having a dessert from some famous restaurant (or chocolate dipped bacon from a high end chocolate maker) - or a bit more grand - they've never experienced the ocean or some place that raises magic and excitement in their soul. And yes, as menial and simple as they are, they mean something deep to the heart that exposed that desire.

Those are simple ones to fix. Thank God we live in modern technology..... overnight shipping for some dessert.... coming right up!

You want to go see the ocean?! I got plenty of airline and hotel points. $59 each way cattle call sale - I got your plane ticket and hotel room if you get the rest.......

And then there are those who are starting their own businesses, terrified that they could lose their entire financial stability if this dream fails, because they walked away from the stable, secure, option of employment to make this a reality.

There are those becoming foster parents that have no idea just how much their hearts will be enlarged and cracked with each new child that comes into their lives.

There are those who dream of working in a field that has a clock ticking against them due to hiring restrictions and they can't seem to find a job that pays enough to cover schooling and life and allow them to train at the same time so they don't miss the age cutoff for the field.

The amount of trust it takes for someone to open up about the smallest dreams should never be taken for granted. It can take as much effort for a heart that has never had the chance to heal between shatterings to open up about the little things as it does for a healed heart to open up about the grandest of dreams.

The question is - have we created a life for ourselves that becomes the sanctuary for these most vulnerable moments? The little ones and the big ones?

Not only that, but how have we set ourselves up to not only nourish and feed the ones in our own lives - so we know how to support those who were brave enough to let us in slightly on their own roads of development?

Yes, our own dreams are measurements of our character and our raw selves - but so is the way we handle and nourish the dreams of those around us, who have been so courageous to expose them to the light of love they feel radiating from us.

We can all do better, there's never a limit to that aspect of our lives. It's a matter of how badly do we want to be that person to those we love?

©Kristen Garcia 01-2020