The size of your dreams

The size of your dreams

“Choti si Asha …. Her heart is young (tiny ?), her wishes are small” this is a curious choice of tune my mind decides to play as I walk to Brooklyn bridge City hall, at the end of a strange, exasperating and yet wonderful day, as days often tend to be, trying absentmindedly, to make sense of it all.

I get distracted by what is around me – the pink cherry blossoms in the tiny City hall park are in their full glory. Look! Look hard and absorb their glorious beauty Into your heart as these blossoms are short lived and will disappear before you know it, says the soft voice in my head. As I turn the corner and run down the steps to the subway and go through the turnstile, the strains of “Asha….” grow louder in my head. I suppress mild annoyance and puzzlement mixed up with an awareness that I still need to work through all that had occurred during the day, in my head, before I get home and plunge into a family evening, excited voices recounting stories of classroom mayhem, a lost badminton game and the threads of teenage heartbreak.

But it won’t stay silent … this song about small dreams.

Oh shut up, I say ! Dreams cannot be small! Dreams have to be huge, big, momentous. They must be.

They must.

For how else will they turn you inside out and upside down. Lift you up further than you can ever imagine, and bring you to your knees like you would have never thought that life ever could. Be that unnamed force that takes you far into an unknown place, full of strangers, utterly freeing yet utterly lonely at the same time.

But more than anything else, for how else will they light up your soul! Inspire you to be your most creative, sing your song out loud for the world to hear, knowing you risk the most painful rejection, testing the depth of your resilience you never thought you had. Drive you to open your heart wide, preparing to be judged and found wanting, and for heartbreak you never thought you could recover from. But Ofcourse you will. Sometimes the mistakes will be big too, gaping in their impact, sometimes hurting those you love, forcing you to momentarily retreat, reflect, recover and only then, come back to do battle again. On other days you will leap ahead, your feet barely touching the ground when every force around you seems to be propelling you forward, oh ! those days when you can do no wrong, when the sky and your mind are both piercing in their clarity and you can see far far ahead into the soul of the person you are becoming. I’ve had both kinds of days ofcourse, much like you might have had.

Somehow your dreams are infectious, the big ones always are. And you find that you have companions on your journey, who lend you their strength in those moments that you just can’t believe any more and gratitude seems hard to come by. You learn to hold on to those companions, they are precious and rare, just as you learn to let go of those that drain. Not the ones that take and don’t give back, for your dreams are big enough for both and your heart has room and joy enough for both. You don’t really need them to give back. I wonder though, some times, is it foolish of me to wear my heart on my sleeve all the time ? The doubts always surface, dulling the joy and yes, the love. But somehow that doesn’t last long ! You are who you are, I suppose, and sometimes, being oblivious to your foolishness is just what you need to be.

Through it all, the dream, that momentous dream, keeps pushing you forward, sometimes skipping, some times dragging your feet, but always forward. If your younger self knew what your dreams would cost you, would she have abandoned them ? It’s a good thing that you can’t peek into your own future, some of us would never get started if it were so. For it is not enough to want, you must first believe. Believe that it will, somehow, all work out. Believe that you will prevail. And in prevailing, take others along with you.

“What if I fall?”, asked Wendy to Peter Pan, in the half forgotten and half imagined lines from a childhood favourite. “Oh my darling, what if you fly ?” He replied as he grabbed her hand and nudged her off her window ledge. I can almost see them from my Murray Hill apartment window, as I get home, up high above my 33rd floor window, on their way to Neverneverland.

Those big dreams… they can make you do that, you know.