Ah, youthful dreams. Our whole live are ahead of us. We haven’t had to make choices that narrow the field, so the sky is the limit in terms of what we might be and do….
If you reader my blog regularly, you probably know that I spent the last year of my high school days living in Istanbul and that I fell in love with the city and its people. Of course, those exchange years come with an end date, and I knew I had to come home at the end of it, despite how difficult that was.
I had done some writing about my experiences while I was there – both for my back-home local newspaper and for a couple of Turkish publications. The world seemed to be my oyster and I had it it all figured out. I had been accepted into a bachelor of journalism program in Canada, so I would come back, and then return to Istanbul to look for copy editing or writing work. After all, there was at least one English-language newspaper in the city at the time, my Turkish was passable, I had a strong social network there (a real one – this was pre- “social networking”!) and it seemed like a wonderful idea …
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In early April this year, twenty-something years after graduating with that journalism degree, I saw this tweet on my Twitter feed:
Hürriyet Daily News is looking for experienced, native-English speaking copy editors. Journalism background and Turkish skills are a plus.
Benefits include lunch, transportation, an on-site gym and private insurance.
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It almost felt like a sign, at a time when I’m re-evaluating my life and how to shape its future. Of course it’s completely out of the question right now, but I did allow myself a giddy moment to dream ever so briefly of jumping on the next plane. I quickly came back to earth, but still, knowing that sort of job might be there in 10 years or so when life is a little less complicated was an intriguing thought even if it’s probably not very practical …
So what do you do with those dreams of youth? When does it make sense to go back and revisit them for their validity and when is it more appropriate to just look back fondly at them as memories of “wonderful ideas” you once had.
I have to admit to being a bit gun-shy on this one. Many years ago, my then-husband and I once made a geographic move to a city several hours away because we had always said we would take the first opportunity to leave our metropolitan home. Both small-town people (albeit different small towns), we were sure that we knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that we didn’t want to be near the big city forever.
Unfortunately, we neglected to re-validate that “knowledge”, and after 11 years near the city, hadn’t processed that we actually quite liked it where we had built our adult lives. The 18-month adventure to a smaller city ended with us shame-facedly moving back to our former suburban town where the whole family was happier. Unfortunately, it also ended up with a not-insignificant financial loss as we lost money in the buying and selling of homes at particularly poor cycles in the housing market. We learned the hard way about taking a step back to ensure that what you once wanted is what you still desire.
Despite that rather expensive lesson, I have managed to live many of my youthful dreams. I became a Mum. I stayed at home with my kids when they were in their pre-school years. I work with words and language every day for a living. Those are pretty wonderful dreams to be living.
So I’m hesitant to throw out all the dreams I used to have but haven’t gotten around to … yet. I haven’t been active for a cause. I haven’t become well-educated in fine arts. I haven’t traveled around the world. I haven’t built a school in South America or a well in Africa.
But are those still realistic dreams? Just because I wanted to do something once doesn’t mean I don’t want to now. Or does it? So I’m struggling through the screening process and followup – figuring out how I amend that old list, drop some dreams off and add to it today’s ideas and determine what’s realistic, and make steps to at least some of them reality.
How do you decide which dreams to keep alive and then truly live them?
