Is it Practical to Follow Your Dreams?

A reader e-mailed me the other day, and out of curiosity I checked out her own blog before writing back. (You can find her at Grown Up Mom. )

What I read really moved me. In particular, she has a couple of recent posts about her youngest daughter’s attempt to get accepted into college to pursue a BFA and become an actor. The daughter is determined, but it’s rough out there, and the rejections are rampant. Her mother asks, “Is it stupid to encourage our children to follow their dreams?”

I e-mailed her back and said that I don’t think so.

As evidence of what can happen if children don’t follow their dreams, I shared with her a shortened version of the following story. Then I decided it was important enough to post about.

I’ve written before about how my perfectionism springs, in part, from having been a “people-pleaser” all my life. I learned early on from my parents, then my teachers and peers, to take my sense of self-worth from how I measured up against other people’s yardsticks—or what I imagined their yardsticks to be.

I also absorbed my parents’ messages about risk, and from these learned fear.

My parents were (are) loving, wonderful people, but they always encouraged me to play it safe, be cautious, and plan for the future. They always encouraged my extracurricular creativity and artistic interests, but when it came to schoolwork, I was told in no uncertain terms that the stakes were high.

“We’d still love you and be just as proud of you if you brought home Cs and Ds, as long as we knew you were trying your best,” they told me. (And to this day, I still believe they really meant that.) “But since you’re such a good student, and you enjoy school so much, it would really help if your grades stayed good enough to get a scholarship. College isn’t cheap.”

This was when I was about 10 or 11 years old.

No pressure, right?

As I hit my teens, I discovered pop and rock music. Unlike my peers, however, just listening and sighing dramatically over my favorite musicians wasn’t enough for me (though I certainly did my share of that, too). I decided I wanted to be a rock-and-roll singer. Front a band. Hold the masses in thrall with the power of my voice and my passion, just like my favorite singers did.

I felt it from them. I loved being on the receiving end. But I wanted to give back—to inspire other people with music in the same way that music inspired me.

But I’d already internalized the message that there was one standard, linear path to a financially secure life—get good grades in school, go on to college, and do well there so that you can land a good job when you graduate.

So it’s not that I took singing lessons or found a band to join and then succumbed to fear—I didn’t even try. I never even saw it as a viable option. Fantasize, sure, but actually pursue? I thought that this was a goal I couldn’t consider “for real”—so I never did.

I earned my B.A. from a good state university, moved to San Francisco, and have now spent over 20 years of my life doing administrative work in a series of “safe” office jobs. I’ve grown more and more miserable, and now, in my early 40s, I’m only just turning the corner and getting really, really angry at having spent so many years supporting other people’s agendas instead of my own.

I’m beginning to look at other options, but I have so much momentum (existing commitments, habits, fears, etc.) built up and pushing me in a direction I don’t want to be going, it’s that much harder to point myself in a new one.

Blogging here at Practice Makes Imperfect is partly my chronicle of breaking out of the people-pleasing mindset and finding the courage to figure out what my own dreams are after all this time.

Who knows? Maybe my rock star dreams would have turned out to be solid and enduring, in which case I might have been singing my heart out under the spotlight in your hometown this weekend.

Maybe I would have tried and totally screwed it up, or tried and pursued it until I was ready for something else.

Or maybe it would have turned out to be a passing teenage fantasy, and I would have at least gained a little experience and knowledge in an interesting area before I quit and moved on.

In any of those cases, my life would be different today for having tried to be a rock singer, even if only because I’d have developed more confidence in the ability to follow my own heart.

I wish I’d had the courage to take that path 20-25 years ago. But I also believe it’s never too late—and that following your dreams is one of the most practical things you can do, because it makes you energized, alert and happy. If you’re in those states, you can achieve a lot.

These days I reserve my singing for the shower . . . but I’m nurturing some other dreams.

I hope you’re doing the same.

Tagged as: dreams, fear, goals, risk