“On the Threshold of a Dream”

Some people reach for the sky, knowing only big plans and bigger dreams.

But when they inevitably fall (as will happen), they don’t land well. They always get up, but after a while their reaching grows smaller.

Manageable. Practical. Realistic.

Where they once were wide-eyed wanderers, waxing poetic about the glory of the world, now…they’re different.

They rarely fall, having learned to stay low to the ground, until time and trial erodes the wonder.

They no longer look up.

If this were a fairy tale, we’d see them retreat into a mountain recess, seeking protection and the dark quiet of solitude. No more flashing stars to inspire or kaleidoscopic sunsets to thrill.

Yet these are modern times, no yarn or fable; our subterranean retreat is the online world we create, lost in the rush of days that spin into years.

Safe from the pain of the fall, finally safe from feeling.

Yet not all the dreams were in vain. There were moments of triumph, both big and small as the world would reckon them. Big enough to inspire reaching, small enough to want more and more.

Those fairy stories we learn as children are our first glimpses into quest and journey, filled with all the moments that kept us enthralled until sleep would come. Sometimes we would be lucky enough for the stories to follow us into slumber. Never long enough, unless we wandered into nightmare. But even those tales have their place in our memories.

As innocent as these fables were, they did us one disservice;

“And they lived happily ever after.”

There would now be growing a seed of disquiet, watered with every hard ending. Because the truth is that all dreams begin and end. Some live longer than they should, prolonged by a kind of unnatural life support, our love of the dream denying its proper season and dignity.

Where is the balance to be found on the knife-edge between bitterness and contentment?

It can only be found when you crawl from the dark places and once more out into the wide world, risking pain and defeat to dream with even the smallest of reaches.

Look up.