Last year on January 4th I released an article titled Love Is Still Here in honor of my late Father’s birthday. Although he’s no longer here, I still think of him everyday and the ways he taught me how to live…
I ran into a kid recently who had the brightest sparkle in his eye. He can remain nameless for the sake of anonymity, but some of you may already know who he is.
This kid told me his story about how he used to weigh 400 lbs and had lost nearly 200 lbs in the last year or two. He is now currently at his goal weight and is working on becoming an established personal trainer.
Familiar Story. Familiar Dream.
His smile was BRIGHT and full of HOPE.
My heart fluttered open as flashes of 2008 appeared before me. I know where he is… I’ve been there… He CAN do this… This kid is gonna make it!
His energy and excitement for life was literally palpable. I listened to his plans, his work, how he’s making progress and I instantly believed in him.
It made me wonder about the reality of dreams. The start, the midst, the finish. Do we get one? Or more? Can we allow many dreams to come into our lives?
The people that are living their dreams always inspire me. I love to see people in the vibrancy of their day to day.
Meeting this kid made me think about where I am right now, on the other side of that initial dream of losing weight and living again. I felt a spark… ‘I can live another dream.’
A new dream is doable and this kid just reminded me of the feeling why.
In my last article about Personal Manifesto’s there’s a quote that says,
“Destiny is a feeling not a destination.”
I wholeheartedly believe it.
The track of destiny feels like momentum, it moves, you move, and all of a sudden you’re moving together.
It’s been hard letting go of the dreams I once had, because they involved my father. And now that he’s not here the dreams have completely shifted, and finding the groove of these new tracks has proven to require a huge amount of due diligence.
I keep searching for this new dream.
It’s going to be different.
I have no idea what it is.
I just need to find it.
Or, I just need to let it find me.
Or maybe it already has but I haven’t fully embraced it or accepted it yet.
I’m at the beginning of another dream. Or maybe I’m still in the same dream. But momentum has been lacking so it tells me that something isn’t right, something isn’t moving it. I have to clear it out so I can get moving again.
I need to feel that spark. It is the pulse of life. Of love. Of giving. Of being.
I miss that spark.
This kid that I just met was a living embodiment of Inspiration. I used to be that way. I lived it. I breathed it. I watched others rise through that inspiration.
Vulnerability is “…Being able to open up your SOUL and let it FLOW so that other people can see their soul in you.” -Oprah
Interviewed by Brene Brown on Living Brave.
So, in that rawness I’ll admit, I’ve been struggling.
That dream was SO ALIVE at one point in my life, I had that same spark in my eyes, and it pains me to say that it faded… Or it broke… Or it died…
And I wonder, where does the dream go? When your heart breaks and you lose something your perception of what really can happen in your life changes. The grief rises and you can drown, you can sink, or you can just float in that deep pool of despair.
I really don’t know what the answer is. I wish I could say moving through grief is like this… Dreaming is like this…
But there’s this space of feeling that you have to get in touch with within yourself to really find out I suppose.
“Whatever it is for YOU that is natural movements.” -Ben Greenfield
I’m so grateful I met this kid. The interaction put me back in touch with an aspect of myself that I’d sort of forgotten. I forgot how much my life changed after losing weight. I forgot how fun it was to become a part of a big business corporation in the fitness industry. I forgot how great it was to meet with people hour after hour constantly helping them achieve greatness in their own lives.
I forgot.
The only thing I remembered is my broken heart. Selfish isn’t it… I’m ashamed to say it. But my energy in life has not been the same since the day my Dad passed away. I want it to be different. I wish it to be different. I keep trying to make it different.
Until my grandma finally told me, “Honey you can’t fix a broken heart. But you can LIVE with it broken open.” My grandpa, her husband for life, passed 8 months after my Dad in 2010. So, she knows…
I’d never really thought of it that way before… I’d spent so many years loathing myself, loathing my life, then fixing myself, and fixing my life that I just started thinking that everything and everyone needed to be fixed in one way or another… and since I thought that way I continued to see every single little thing that needed fixing. That perception is draining. The work never stops and you find yourself moving in circles. The same circles.
I just want to love everybody. But I’m no master at forgiveness. I barely step on the mat.
“Forgiveness means standing in conviction that Love will have the final say.” – Marianne Williamson
What I want to say is this, I never thought about just letting my broken heart be and honoring everyone else’s broken hearts, and that maybe somewhere in the space between we’ll come to an understanding of each other. Through the pain. Through the love.
Is that what it takes?
I don’t know.
But I do know that this kid helped open my eyes to the reality of dreaming again. Of getting to the space where things actually really move. I can keep spending time trying to fit a square peg into a round circle, but it’s never going to work.
I hate admitting that too. Finding yourself is scary shit. Asking questions and hearing raw true answers isn’t always a pleasant experience. If you admit that you Can’t do something, are you limiting yourself or are you just being honest about your reality and your ‘squareness’?
I guess we all find out one way or another.
But one thing I know for sure, Dreams Are Still Here.
