Dream Childlike

I watch my children with absolute wonder. They are amazing, and I am not just saying that because I am their mother. All children are.

They have no limits on their imaginations. The set goals of being cowboy boot wearing astronauts who own art galleries and find a new species of tiny monkey. And they are serious about it. I wish I had a mind was that big.

I hear all the time that children are limited in their understanding, but I think that is a constructed truth adults tell ourselves and our kids to make ourselves feel better. Think back to when you dreamed with no limits, to the discarded dreams, to the promises you made to your self, and then broke. I know my past is riddled with them. Usually they are marked by the memory of a sudden death at the hands of others: teachers, parents, friends.

“That’s kinda risky.”

“It’s a nice dream, but your not really going to do that.”

“It’s time to grow up.”

And I listened. I listened and I sighed and trudged on the straight and narrow path of normalcy.

But what child wants to be normal? What child dreams of being average and unnoticed and ordinary?

And why do we have to change? There seems to be no wisdom in that. History if full of men and women who dreamed big. They are the ones we hold up high as an example of success, and then we turn around and tell our children “Be like them, but don’t do what they do. Do the opposite. Do what makes you average. Do what makes me comfortable.”

“…what makes me comfortable.”

Children’s dreams get stifled for our sake, not for theirs.

Learn to dream big again. Make people call you crazy. Make them tell you to stop being unrealistic.

Then you know you will be on the right path.