wings still intact...

"wings still intact..." photo by Gina Matchinsky, at the Henry Doorley Zoo, Omaha, Nebraska

January 21, 2014 question is "What are you looking forward to?"

Ever dreamed of late? I don't for quite sometime now.

Sleep researchers say that every 1 1/2 hours in between sleep we dream every sleeping time of our lives. People, like me, who say they don't simply just do not remember. Because the only times we recall our dreams was when it occurred right after we wake up and sometimes our minds were so preoccupied with many things to ever spare a thought.

There was a time I used to remember my dreams a lot. I even recall knowing I was dreaming and there were times when I was even able to control the happenings in the dream. That awareness that you are in a dream state is what was referred to as "lucid dreaming". It can be a "dream-initiated lucid dream" when while dreaming you realize that you are and a "wake-initiated lucid dream" when the awareness that you are dreaming came after  you woke up and then continued dreaming again. And I have experienced both so that just goes to show that at one point I dreamed and recalled them.

During those times I remember most of my nighttime dreams, I recall having too many  daytime dreams, too. Not much for myself, I dream mostly for my children. I longed for a happy and secure home for them. I so wished they would all finish a college degree. I prayed that they will be God-fearing and grow into a responsible and successful individuals. I dreamed that they will have a brighter and happy future.

Then one day, I just woke up to the thought that I have no control over any of those dreams to get realized especially the part about giving them a happy and secure home.

Giving them a secure home was hard enough already but what was harder was the happy side to it since it was already a living hell for me to stay in a house that I could no longer call home. That was the time when I started not recalling my night time dreams also.

But by accepting the things that are beyond my control, it cleared my mind and made me think no longer in terms of the dreamer's solutions, but more workable ones. I stopped brooding over the what might-have-beens and thought instead in terms of possibilities for the future.

The way Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. worded it has been an inspiration:
"Yet in opinions look not always back --
Your wake is nothing, mind the coming track;
Leave what you've done for what you have to do;
Don't be "consistent", but be simply true."

So back to the question of what am I looking forward to - I don't think I have much to look forward to because I view looking forward as already getting what you hope for for certain. But I still dare to hope and perhaps, I may still have a few dreams left, too - not the kind that needs recalling when I wake up. And probably I no longer recall nighttime dreams because of a busy mind working and getting too much preoccupied with more feasible stuff to ever have the time to entertain the thought or have the luxury of recalling things as trivial as dreams.

So not much of looking forward to but it is more of still being able to dream. I still dream of the dreams I had for my children, but now I also learned to dream of dreams for myself, too, and I am holding on to that dream. And as a quote by Langston Hughes says "Hold fast to dreams, for if a dream dies, life is a broken-winged bird, that can not fly." Sometimes it is the hope of realizing dreams that keeps people going - fly. It can even inspire them to soar.

So what do I dream for myself? John Lennon, Beatles singer and composer, once said that "A dream you dream alone is just a dream..." So it is the dream of building beautiful dreams together with someone that I dream of because it is only a dream you dream together that turns into reality.