A Paradox of Minor Proportions

Before I started thinking about how I would write this new entry I was fixated on finding the perfect title for it. This came to mind because no matter how perplexed I may be at the time of writing, in the great scheme of things it really is of minor proportions. I am now facing a new dilemma of sorts. faced with the prospect of actually catapulting my life in the direction of my dreams and in fact, almost all of my dreams, I have a newfound sense of guilt, and doubt.

I have been at the starting point up until now. All previous experiences; heart aches, losses, failures, pursuits, have been tied up in the place of my childhood. I'm moving on to a new plane in my life and I can feel it, in my bones, in my opinions, or lack of them I should say, that I am perpetually growing up. In becoming a parent, and in not having things pan out the way I imagined they would I was given an opportunity to reset my way of thinking. Previously so sure of everything, being thrown into a world where I was not the first priority while still trying to find my way made me see how little I understood anything at all. And now, six years into that journey I am finding out that every year I know a little less.

I have been chasing these dreams of travel, of study, of creating a life that is nothing short of extraordinary every moment of every day for as long as I can remember. I know trauma plays a huge role in that fierce desire to live and thrive where no one could imagine it possible. I think it's a trait found in most resilient souls. The deep need to avenge a bitter past with a bright, impossible future. But now I see that it lay just ahead of me, no longer a distant blurry vision of intangible things. I am counting down less than thirty days time until I return to my home country of Brazil. I am returning to school in the two months that follow that adventure to pursue the line of study I feel I was lead to complete.

And I have the strangest sense of guilt. I never imagined, being as close as I am that of the feelings that come to play when you are reaching your dreams, head soaring among the clouds, that such poisonous guilt and corrosive doubt would be along for the ride. Sometimes in the quiet of the night it strikes me in the deep cavity of my heart walls, a pounding pain that spreads and makes me lose my breath. Questions of what I am capable of. Wondering if all that lay ahead of me are years that keep changing my perspective and not for the better. Fear that I will lose the eternal optimism and instead have it be replaced by cold, hard realism. In Paulo Coelho's book The Alchemist,that genuinely affected my life in the utmost positive way, one character in particular always haunted me. It was a man who had Mecca in his line of vision but only in his mind's eye. He was busy doing life instead of living his dreams. He was every day adding to the clutter of his life with more and more work. He knew he would never see his Mecca. But it became enough for him to dream of it. To have it untainted unperturbed by what reality could to it; figuring, bad weather, family becoming ill while he was away, or worse, the loss of his security in his work and home life, he would simply never go. I felt kindred to this character. I felt like most people were this character in life. And I felt a strong need to prove to myself that I could in fact be a follower of dreams and push past the disparity of doubt that can really encumber you from doing it.

But like I said, every year I know less and less. Once brazen and sure, now I'm anxious and afraid. What if I am making the wrong decision here? Sure its only a few weeks away from my children, but what if in the wake of my absences their lives are changed as well? What if I invest in this education only to have it collapse around me some perilous decade to come? All the questions I busied myself not to have to answer suddenly came flooding in with all the joy that had first taken up my whole heart. Can I say with any certainty that I will push ahead and continue to be a dream chaser? Well, if I could be certain about that, I would need to be much, much younger. So maybe as a solution I will hold onto my youthful hope. I will press ahead even though the years ahead of me threaten to rob me of the very things I hold dear. I will go on blindly yet with eyes wide open and pray that God lead me by green pastures and beautiful things both in pain and in progress, so that I might let my soul be buoyant within me for always and God Willing, bring some joy or hope to the lives of others around me by doing so. Blaze the perpetual path if you would.