The dream and me.

Goals are strange, often illusive things. We aspire to them, we try to tackle them, we aim for them, we fight for them, and every so often, we achieve them. Lately, I’ve been trying to determine what I need to make that every-so-often be simply every.

In saying this, I don’t mean to say that I want to have everything I ever desired. Honestly, that’d be quite cumbersome. Rather, I’ve been evaluating what the core desires in me are and then figuring out how to make them absolutes. No more “one day,” but rather, “on my way.”

Some of you know through reading here, as well as perhaps through personal interactions, that my deepest longings rest in writing and in experiencing. So, I want to travel the world not to have done the rounds and be able to say “I’ve been there,” but because I want to go and experience that culture, interact with those people, and see life from their perspective. I want the learning and growing of that; I long for the understanding of that. There is nothing deeper in me than this desire to experience every people group in every corner of the world… and to connect with them.

I don’t much care how it happens. I just know it MUST happen.

The writing is my wanting to share those comical moments when two cultures just don’t quite get the other. Sort of that “lost in translation” aspect. Not, I must clarify, to poke fun at either culture, but to show the humor in their meeting and the process of connecting. Then, too, expressing the beauty of these connections and the delight of discovery of… well, friends.

I guess my goal is sort of a cultural anthropologist on speed. Right, I do know that an anthropologist tries to observe more than interact, but still what I seek is understanding and connection on that deeper level that both embraces and transcends cultures.

This passion, this intense focus, that comes with this rather unusual goal is something that cannot be mollified or quelched. In that, however, it is isolating. Many people admire such vision and think they share it, but of these few really want it in practice, and even fewer really understand it. My family cannot really understand it. And, in truth, not understanding this means not understanding me at my core.

My dream is not the accepted “American Dream.” Even on book websites I have been called names and berated and admonished (and those are only the nice things) for these goals. The most harsh are the people that had similar divergent dreams, but fell into routine or made choices that forced them to no longer be able to easily pursue their dreams, so they chided and mocked me.

I, however, have not, will not give in to status quo. It’s a beautiful thing if that’s your dream. It’s my brother’s dream – a home of his own, a wife and a family to raise up in it, the traditional job scenario, active in the local church. I’m so incredibly joy-filled that he has achieved so much of this. But it’s not my dream. It simply never will be. I don’t like the idea of settling down. It makes my bum itch just thinking about it.

Also, I will not apologize for going for it. I won’t even apologize if I fail at it – more than once, if it comes to that, in order to attain it. Because it’s about me going for MY dream, not coming ‘round to someone else’s. And I do seek whatever means and wisdom that is out there to help me find that path to my goal. So in all this, I’m determining that this one will NOT be “the one that got away.”