hope and hopes dashed

I’m living a risky life. It’s kind of crazy. I’m very clearly, very deliberately chasing an impossible dream. And there’s this thing about impossible dreams. They are normally dashed against rocks, broken into pieces, and sucked down drains.

I know this. But, well, I decide to think… not for me. For me, this dream will happen. And so I continue chasing those dreams.

But here’s the funny thing about when you orient your life to chase hope. When you do that, you get a lot of hope. I compare my life now with my life prior to making “the decision.” Back then, I was comfortable – really quite comfortable – but just about everything was steady-state. There were no hints of any great joy on the horizon. I had very little “hope” for anything exciting. I knew what the next day would bring for the most part and was never surprised unless things were bad.

But now, I have great hopes smacking me in the face on an almost daily basis. So much that I have had to become a zen master of “not getting my hopes up” lest I have a heart attack with anticipation. I don’t even tell most people I know about things I would have before trumpeted as the Next Big Thing because there are so many things and – remember, this is an impossible dream, after all – often they fizzle out or crash in a glorious manner.

And this is another difference between “before the decision Jason” and now. I don’t fear the hopes crashing and burning – I figure they are providing embers to fire up the next step of the journey, at the very least. I now face and embrace failure and dashing dreams, because I believe all of that pain and all of those obstacles are necessary steps towards achieving an impossible dream. Possible dreams may not have those things. Impossible ones do. (That’s why we consider them impossible. Because most people get punched in the face one too many times and turn around to go back to the safe warm place. When they get there they say, “Yeah, it was impossible.”)

But I’m not turning around. It’s too fun to have new hope every day.