Dreaming a future
Lives are made of choices, and the small, day to day ones often shape the larger issues and inform the options we have. Who we are is fashioned from one hour to the next in the small details of how we choose to live. Our dreams are a part of this. What do we aspire to? Where do we see ourselves being this time next year? What are we moving towards? What are we trying to leave behind?
We live in a culture where the selling of small dreams is an everyday issue. Adverts don’t just offer us specific products, but try to imply a whole lifestyle that we are to desire. And what are we desiring? A certain kind of body shape, sofa, kitchen arrangement, a holiday. A nice, well behaved and clean looking child, a partner who brings flowers… It pays to stop and think about the casual daydreams.
There’s nothing wrong with dreaming small. Having just the right thing can make worlds of difference. The slow cooker, the wok, a ball of yarn, the right mattress… Knowing how those small dreams fit into the totality of your life is important. At the moment I’m dreaming a wormery to deal with kitchen waste and a bin to grow potatoes in. Small dreams that relate to a much bigger idea about living lightly. In our little dreams we are building the shape of our choices. When the opportunity to dream big comes along, the small dreams will help you birth the big ones.
In magical practice, will is everything. Will without a grand plan can get you into all kinds of trouble, though. Toddlers tend to have a lot of will coupled with entirely short term thinking. Left to their own devices, this combination can prove fatal! Will must be shaped by intent – clear, well considered intent that will hold up to challenges and scrutiny. You can’t work magic of any sort with a half-arsed plan in which you’ve not invested much attention. All of this also depends on self knowledge. If you do not know yourself, you will not know what you want or need, what methods of chasing it would suit you, and if you get there you may find it wasn’t it anyway.
Paying attention to the small dreams helps develop self knowledge. What do you crave? What are you missing? What are you working for? It’s also far too easy to get into the trap of running hard, working hard, and that becoming an end in itself. Get too tired and downtrodden and there may be no space for the idea of working *for* something, you just crawl from day to day. Survival replaces living, and none of us would aspire to that, if we recognised the choice.
The tougher things are, the easier it is to have no time to create even the smallest dreams. However, this is the time when a bit of dreaming is most important. It is the dreaming that will help us spot better opportunities and see a reason to go for them. It is dreaming that helps us hold a sense of self not wholly dependent on our most immediate circumstances. In terms of getting through a crisis, that can make all the difference.
Look after the small dreams. Give them time and space to grow. Let them show you something of who you are and where you want to be. If your dreams turn out to be full of other people’s product pitches, you can choose to lay them down and try some other vision.
