Dreams of Childhood and Fears of Parenting

As a small child growing up I had no doubt that any dream I had was in fact a vision. I thought that I would someday have the ability to fly and fight off all the evil giants of the world. I would hear about all the evils of the world but I believed that the right person had not come to save us yet. I might have been a little convinced it was going to me, or at least I would be a big part of it. I would take my trusted sword in hand and with my make shift bow on my back I would head off into the forest to find adventure with my siblings. We would build key fort locations for gathering our information and map out the area to help navigate around so we could better track the darkness that everyone was afraid of.

I generally believed we could change the world. Anything was possible. Our beliefs were unshakable. If we believed a tree was alive and would talk to us we would talk to it for hours in anticipation of striking the right subject that would intrigue the tree enough to respond. I once stood out there for who knows how long...children have no concept of time.. with my arm outstretched because I believed that a peregrine falcon would land on my arm and we would be best friends.

A child's dreams are endless, they have no goals because they know that at some point they will achieve anything. They have fears, but they are primal. They fear death, pain, loss, loneliness.( I feared spiders only because I was convinced they would eat me.) There is nothing a child can not accomplish if they think of it. They have high expectations, but why not they have the whole world in their hands, an endless future, to them they have immortality.

My dream that I would save the world and all its complexities did not go away as I got older. It just shifted focus. As I got older and more knowledge was entered into my mind from events and experiences I found that I would try a different more subtle tool to save the world. I learned that evil was not a physical entity but an internal. It was more potent than I thought as a child. A mere word could reverberate like a plague through a whole society. One day someone could be the greatest entity around facing open arms and warm faces and the next a rumor could toss them down to the darkest place where there was only turned backs and mental glares. I thought that in order to fight the worlds internal evil I could use what I loved to do, create art and write stories.

I would write a story that was so engrossed and stimulating that I could shift someones soul to a great purity that would also spread like a plague, carrying peace and harmony to the far corners of the universe. Everyone would realize that yes everything has different meanings, but they are the same thing. My art would draw in people from all around and they would look at one another in a new light. They would shake out their dark souls and start to look at their future as something that is great and worth sharing with everyone, not just a single society but all together with their different ideas and dissimilar decisions.

This created a challenge that would battle my childhood perception of reality.

I learned there is no end to what someone believes. No end to how one thing could be perceived. A cat can be ten different things. Some people believed the heart could contain hate and still love. So many meaning and beliefs for a single thing and everyone fighting over what the true meaning is. I got overwhelmed. I was easily sucked into the reality that everyone had created instead of the one I was strongly convicted of as a child. Sadly I have not ever completed a story worth changing or influencing. I have never made a piece of art that takes the breath away and makes people wonder if they are on the right path.

Why do I bring this up?

I think of this as a new parent. I think back to my childhood and think up until now. What did I bring into this world that will help my child understand that they should go after what they believe. Have I accomplished enough to help let them understand that they should dream and never give up? Have I given up?

I begin to develop a fear of dreams and desires and a fear of my child's happiness.

All these cross your mind and more as you worry about how you will influence your child and how your child will influence the world. I understand that you don't need to influence the world. You can just live your life with dreams not so encompassing. Yet is not the point of dreams and desires to be able to strengthen your conviction that anything and everything is possible?

So do I convince my child to strive for the impossible? Is it impossible just because I could not do it, or that I simply have not done it yet? I think of this over and over again as I look at my child, looking at me with those intelligent eyes studying me, trying to understand me...

I find myself in this confusing conundrum of childhood expectations and fears as an adult and parent. Yet as I think more about it the more I believe that being fearful for my child's conviction is like wondering if a brick wall has the capability to talk to the sun.

The only way that a child will lead a good life of expectation, desire and dreams without worrying about the outcome, is for the parent to continue to strive for their own expectations, desires, and dreams.

I will continue to practice my writing, and art. I will ever be vigilant in what I decided would be the outcome in my life so that my child will learn how to struggle through and achieve. They will see me have ups and downs. They will see that I will fail and fail again. But they will see me continue onward. This will be what keeps me from fearing for my child.

I may never reach my goal, but my child will see that it is OK. He will see that the path is ground works for anyone who would want to partake.

I want my child to have big dreams and big expectations. I want my child to want to accomplish it. I want them to believe it is possible. So I re-convict myself because of my child's potential dreams that have not happened yet because he is only 6 months. I believe I will change the world, through my art and my writing. I may not do this in a global scale right off, but I will be strong and stand up to my fear of underachieved dreams and know that my dream may be related to my child. My child will see me strive and will in turn strive and their child will do the same and if it plays out, the very few we nudge will nudge a few more and so on and so forth until the world is at peace and we can all hang up our capes and relax.