Let’s talk about Bubbles: An exposition on Dreams
“You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new
dream.” –C.S. Lewis
I love that it’s a new tradition to blow bubbles at wedding instead of pelting the bride and groom with birdseed. Whoever invented that idea, I freaking love you.
One of my favorite words in Spanish is bubble. Burbuja. Pronounced boor-boo-hu. I also
love bubbles in general.
Bubbles are a very minimally involved activity to entertain
children. These little people get seriously tickled when you blow bubbles for
them. I can’t blame them. There is something so satisfying about blowing the
biggest bubble of your life and then watching it pop, dribbling leftover soap
all over you and whoever is near by.
I love popping bubbles. Especially when there are a ton of
them and you start poking your fingers in rapid motion like a boxer training
for the ring. It’s invigorating.
I love that it’s a new tradition to blow bubbles at wedding instead of pelting the bride and groom with birdseed. Whoever invented that idea, I freaking love you.
But there is one kind of bubble that I don’t like to have popped.
It’s the bubble of my fantasy. The bubble of my dreams. The bubble of my
visions coming to fruition and me emerging victorious, slaying the dragon and
uniting the kingdom. Yes, girls dream of slaying dragons, too.
My bubble being burst into nonexistence is a very frequent
occurrence because I have lots of
dreams. Like, lots of them. Not night dreams—those are stupid and usually make
no sense. They can be entertaining when you remember them and I have some
dreams that I’ve remembered for years. Remind me to tell you about the dream
where my dad arranged a marriage between me and a retarded Guatemalan man. A
wedding that never happened because it was interrupted by a hurricane that
washed everyone away except me, who was wearing the absolutely most hideous
wedding dress on planet earth.
That dream has become a legend.
But I’m not talking about those kind of dreams. I’m talking
about the dreams that you really, really want to come true. The dream that
hasn’t happened yet. The dreams you had as a child of growing up and becoming
an actress, or a musician, or a professional UFC fighter. It’s the vision of
your dream wedding or your dream job or you dream husband or wife or kids.
These dreams fill your waking fantasy and you give them extra puffs to make
them grow bigger whenever you have time to focus on them.
Or perhaps it’s the dream that never will happen. The dream,
that once you realized it burst and is never coming back, makes you feel like
maybe this life isn’t worth living after all. It’s the burst bubble that can
make dreaming seem like a waste of time. What’s the point of hoping when your
hope is sure to be popped like so many bubbles on a summer’s day?
I remember the moment, about 10 years ago when I realized
there was no possible way to be a singer, actress, writer, poet, lawyer,
missionary, youth worker, counselor, interpreter and be multilingual, get married, adopt kids, have kids, have
foster kids, own a ranch, visit every continent and most of the countries,
dance like Byoncé, rap like Macklemore, live on a different planet (even though
I hate space) discover a new island (they’ve already been discovered) and visit
the Congo to see the pygmies. I’m reaching the age in my life when dreams are
actually starting to erase themselves from achievability. I’m starting to
realize there is not time to do everything. And I’m starting to realize that
several thousand of my millions of dreams have already burst and thousands more
are bursting every day. The more dreams you have, the more opportunities for
those dreams not to come true. Just like the more risks you take the more
opportunities for you to fail.
Well that’s depressing.
And it could be even more depressing to focus on all the
things I’ve wanted to do but couldn’t—for some reason or another. It could be
depressing to focus on the things I’ve had to say no to. It could be depressing
to think of prioritizing and having to put some dreams on a lower level.
Then I have to tell myself “Whoa, girl, get a grip” which
leads to me recounting not the dreams that have died but the ones that have
lived. It also reminds me that dreams are the sort of things that are
transient, changeable, moldable, and not, in anyway, set in stone. This means
that for every dead dream, a new dream is borne. Every goodbye often leads to a
new hello (this is actually true). And the day you are no longer dreaming is
the day you have either given up, surrendering to the circumstances or you are
dead.
True, I have had to say no many times. Or I have had “no”
said to me. If that were the end, that would just be sad. But it’s not the end.
They say when life hands you lemons, make lemonade. I say,
when life bursts your bubble, make another one.