If weeks had themes, this one would have been “Dreams.” I’m reading Carry On, Mr. Bowditch with my 4th grade students. It’s a biographical fiction novel about the life of Nathaniel Bowditch, the author of The American Practical Navigator. Nathaniel’s life was one of disappointments and elusive dreams. My students were remarking that the story is so sad, and unfortunately for them, they have just begun to witness the tragedies that will shape his life. But Nathaniel Bowditch was not one to surrender to the circumstances of life; he would “Carry on.” He is the poster child for making lemonade out of lemons.
As part of our literature study on this novel, I read my class “Dream Deferred” by Langston Hughes even though I am not sure if their young lives have supplied them with enough understanding of the deferment of dreams. While they have certainly know disappointment, loss, and struggle, they have not poured a lifetime into a dream that life would not allow. I, on the other hand, know this all too well. I cannot read the words of this poem without thinking about the various ways my dreams have been lost, rearranged, or fulfilled in backward ways that I never could have imagined at the moment of their inception.
Looking around my home at the life I live, I see the remnants of a lifetime of dreams both lost and found: a family portrait filled with smiling faces of the children my husband and I have raised or nearly raised, the stack of papers to grade for a difficult job I continue to adore, the clutter of our abundance, the silence that marks a new stage of life my husband and I are entering, and mementoes inherited from parents long gone who shaped my life. I am surrounded by reminders of all I have, all I have lost, and the evidence of my personal achievements and my failures. One cannot sit in the stillness of their once chaotic home and not feel the changes brought on by the growth and loss of their children. I cannot help but reflect on the dreams I had of motherhood which for us held infertility, pregnancy, foster care, adoption, homeschooling, public schooling, private schooling, medical emergencies, mental health challenges, learning disabilities, college, death, and currently a mostly empty nest. My dream and my reality bear almost no resemblance to one another.
Dreams require courage because you must give your heart over to something you might lose. This week, I told my students that I wanted them to fail: fail often and fail big. Failure is a prerequisite for success and growth. You can’t fail big unless you are brave enough to invest your hopes into something. I told them to give it there all and then fail again and again until they succeeded. Those are the achievements that truly really worth it in life, the ones in which you’ve really put yourself on the line.
It’s a rare dream that shows up wrapped with a ribbon and handed to you with ease. Most dreams come at a cost. Often one dream conflicts with another dream and you need to chose to let one die in order to give life to the other. Some dreams are so powerful you are compelled to relentlessly pursue, forcing you to count the costs and pay the price. Some dreams you will need to reimagine around the life you have been dealt. Sometimes we must dare to realize a completely different dream because we have grown into someone completely different than we were when we first began to dream the big dreams. The greatest challenge is determining which dreams are which. There are a thousand roads we could walk down and all should begin in prayer. In faith, we will travel along a difficult and even discouraging journey forward laced with hope, grit, curiosity, peace, diligence, contentment, and a million tiny blessings.
I never want to land in a place where I am content to have no more dreams. I want my life to be marked by the passionate pursuit of the best life God planned for me. I want my kids, and grandkids, and students to see someone who never gave in to hopelessness, never quit growing, never stopped learning, and never said that I had had my fill of adventure and didn’t need any more. I want my dream deferred to be the seed that breaks forth from the dark soil which stole it and becomes the mighty oak that rises up.
Dream Deferred
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
Like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore–
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over–
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?