When I Grow Up: Dealing With Shattered Childhood Dreams

We go through our childhood feeling invincible, without a thought or care in the world of what our future holds for us. Then one day we are told that we need to figure out what we want to be when we grow up, perhaps implying that we are not anything until this happens.

Some of us want to make an impact on the world, some want to have celebrity status, and then there's those of us who just don't know what we want to become, however still with illusions of grandeur. We create big dreams and aspirations in our head for our future selves, and we hang onto this dream for most of our lives. We dream, and plan in order to visualize ourselves as this new perfected 'us' that we expect to miraculously transform into once we have achieved 'growing up'!

But, what happens if our lifelong childhood dream falls through, or gets forgotten along the way. Perhaps our dreams are unattainable or unrealistic. All of a sudden we have gone through half a lifetime when we have an epiphany. This dream that what we have held onto this entire time isn't going to happen. Then what?

Everyone has their own individual and unique experiences. We all need to tell our story and we need for those that we tell, to understand our story too. We all need to understand death and to cope with death, and we all need help in our passages from birth to life and then to death. We need for life to signify, to touch the eternal, to understand the mysterious. We need all this to happen in order to find out who we are.

People say that what we're all seeking is a meaning for life. I don't think that's what we're really seeking. I think that what we're seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on a purely physical plane will have resonances within our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the passion of being alive.

That's what it's all finally about, and the clues of our stories help us to find true meaning within ourselves.

We are so engaged in doing things to achieve purposes of outer value that we forget about the inner value. The passion that is associated with being alive, is really what it's all about.

Eventually we all question the meaning of life. Our personal stories are the breadcrumbs, or rather clues to the spiritual potential of our human lives. That is, what we are capable of knowing and experiencing within. So, essentially our accumulated life stories, or the different chapters of our lives changes our 'search for the meaning' into the experience of meaning.

We are so engaged in doing things to achieve purposes of outer value that we forget about the inner value. The passion that is associated with being alive, is really what it's all about.

We are raised by our parents values and these obsolete values become instilled into our permanent record. And this partly creates our vision of 'what I want to be when I grow up'.

I was taught that I would graduate high school, go to college, meet my soul mate, get married, have the 2.5 children while juggling my career, adopt the slobbering St Bernard, build that white picket fence, and ultimately live happily ever after.

But somehow, for some reason there becomes a glitch in the matrix. This happens to many of us. We mindlessly choose the blue pill, when we should have chosen the red one. Nevertheless, somewhere along the line, in one of our chapters of life, things get a little topsy turvy. Those dreams that we have held onto suddenly become shattered by various catastrophic events that ultimately land us into our current reality. So, are we simply grasping at straws now?

All we have to do is look around us and see the results of this glitch. For example, the homeless people who live down by the railroad tracks, did they plan on living this lifestyle? Was this their childhood dream? Or people that live through near fatal accidents. They too, have not planned this into their big picture. The examples are endless.

My high school graduation did proceed exactly how I had planned in my life vision. But after that things started to go downhill according to my 'plans for life'. I quickly realized that I needed to learn how to improvise along the rest of the way.

Improvisation is the key to getting through it. It's that moment when we realize that things aren't going quite as we had in mind. We re-evaluate our situation and re-adjust our lives accordingly.

When the college wasn't what I hoped for, I improvised by postponing my education. And I also improvised when I divorced my soul mate and husband and father of my two children. I made these revisions in my previously planned out life. I did this out of necessity and an innate instinct to survive.

These unplanned events are not something that most of us prepare to experience. We have a concise and very carefully drawn out picture of what our life is supposed to be. We also have a clear vision of how things are supposed to turn out. The values that we learn as children and that we are taught to be sacred, like 'till death do us part', now have no meaning whatsoever. Now, that thought alone can be one of the scariest things on the planet.

So, now what?

Nobody preps us to wing it through life. I imagine not many of us are taught such imperative lessons. On the contrary, we are instead taught that we are going to be happy, successful and at peace when we grow up.

So, when we finally come to this realization, it's like a spiritual awakening. Something moves within us and we cope while learning to readjust our lives in order to make it in life. That's when we are forced to learn improvisation and the 'fight or flight' instinct kicks in. At this point we learn to create our true 'happily ever after'....one chapter at a time.

The Rules of Life Are Becoming Obsolete( what our parents taught us)

Whatever happened to good old values and why are all the rules changing? When did it start being OK to have babies out of wedlock, forgo high school education, and all the important values that have been taught to our ancestors for generations? What happens when we can no longer embrace those powerful stories that we were taught as children, of what our future is supposed to hold? How do we overcome shattered dreams?

As children, we are taught that we are going to be happy, successful and at peace when we grow up...

Those three states of being are not only incorrect, but they describe absolutely nothing close to what life is really about.

What most of us are ill prepared for when we grow up is the fact that happiness is not achieved by our dreaming of being ballerinas and football stars, just to find out that we do not ever achieve these dreams.

We are also taught that success is something that miraculously drops into our lap once we are adults, when in reality it takes years of determination and perseverance in order to be successful in our goals.

And we are also never told that peace is simply the third word in the sentence "Rest In Peace" and you can be sure that you will be at peace when you are six feet under.

What happens when we can no longer embrace those powerful stories that we were taught as children, of what our future is supposed to hold?

Those values that my parents taught me are now so obsolete, and I am finding that the rules of life that I instilled into my children are also becoming antiquated. What I held as unchangeable rules of life, have now become useless in today's society.

Although I tried my best to convey what I believed to be realistic goals, today's dreams have become significantly altered through my children's eyes.

Those values that I held with such esteem such as:

1. get a diploma

2. manage a career

3. marriage

4. children....

Have now turned into:

1. drop out of high school because you are pregnant,

2. dump the guy who may or may not be the father of the baby

3. live off of welfare for the next 19 years.

We should never stop teaching our children to dream. However, along with dreams we should teach the wisdom of life. We all need to know the realistic approach to obtaining our dreams.

And that our dreams are definitely within reach if we stay realistic with a mythological twist so as to view our dreams with a true to the moment approach.

What happens when we grow up in a fairy tale land with unrealistic views on the outcome of our future can take years to recover from.

Although, I must stress that it is very important to remember this one important fact... WHATEVER YOU CAN VISUALIZE, YOU CAN MANIFEST.

It takes alot of work, determination, and time to manifest your dreams. And your dreams may also take some creativity, improvisation, and the capability to take things with stride in order to fulfill them. So, I may not yet be a Radio City Music Hall Rockette, but that doesn't mean I don't still dance half naked in front of the mirror at home.

But my wisdom of life has taught me that my dream of opening a business is really and truly at my fingertips, if I stay focused on my goal and dispose of all those unrealistic fairy tales.

I always consider my future with every aspect of life, except for love.....and the only reason I mention 'love' as a grey area is because....you just don't ever know what you're gonna get....

I've become accustomed to living by the "seat of my pants" and I don't hold back how I feel because I'm afraid, or nervous. I'm honest with myself every step of the way.

I am no longer my own anchor cause sometimes in life we gotta wing it a little in order to fly!

Comments

MissCue 2 years ago from Santa Barbara, CA.Hub Author

Thank you for the sweet comment, larbear02.

larbear02 2 years ago from Santa Barbara, California

very interest,you definitely got a way with words

MissCue 2 years ago from Santa Barbara, CA.Hub Author

Thank you, whonunuwho, for your insight. I agree with you, however sometimes it's not us who make the bad or wrong choices, but that the choices are made for us as a result of our environment and circumstances. Either way, it is always an inspiration when obstacles are overcome. Glad you commented here!

whonunuwho 2 years ago from United States Level 6 Commenter

You definitely sound as though you have the right mindset and attitude about what life has to offer us, and how sometimes we do all make the wrong choices. As long as we have breath and a fighting spirit, we can overcome any setback, and move in into a brighter future, by this strength possessed by us all. Thank you for sharing this poignant message of life.

MissCue 2 years ago from Santa Barbara, CA.Hub Author

Thank you, jamila sahar , for your insightful comment! It saddens me how the world is changing so rapidly. Where are our values, patience, and ethics going? Parents teach their young these traits, or rather they did when I grew up. Perhaps its because so many families are single moms who work full time and cross their fingers in hopes of getting a good kid. Who knows...

jamila sahar 2 years ago

What a great hub ! As an educator of music and piano performance and I often think of these same things. Things are so different from when I began to study music and take piano lessons. Now, the youth think everything is supposed to be instantaneous, that you will obtain the skill of playing an instrument instantly like an instant download from Itunes! They put in the bare amount of time practicing not even 30 minutes per day compared to my 2-3 hours per day minimum and at least an hour or an hour and a half just on the development of my technique alone. I had a student come to me one time to learn the 'Moonlight' Sonata by Beethoven and could not even read the notes yet expected to play this masterpiece in two or three weeks because it 'sounds' easy. When I began to show and explain the technical difficulty in this piece she tried for a month or two then gave up after learning one page. I asked her to read about Beethoven and understand the meanings behind the music as there are many and the significance of this Sonata in the history of Classical music, and explained in order to play this music you need to first understand what the composer was going through and the significance of the music as well as understand the harmonic analysis. Well of course they quit the piano lessons (sigh), I supposed they downloaded it onto their Ipod and listen to it every-day and will probably never take the time to learn about its history or learn to play it, as they told me how much they love the piece, but it's too 'hard'. Thanks for sharing this lovely hub !! I look forward to reading more from you !