The Death of a Dream

Where do dreams go when they die?  And how are we supposed to handle their passing?  How does one say good-bye to a dream?

In those dark nights and gray mornings when the end goal is lost in a fog and everything we’ve been working toward — desperately hoping for — seems so out of reach, what do we hold on to?  When we’re standing on the edge of a fresh grave and the headstone reads “Here lie my dreams” where do we go next?

I was eviscerated this morning by Wasteland from the new Need To Breathe album.  It so aptly addressed everything I’ve been feeling.  The momentum of the pressure has been building, the hairpin curve speeding closer with an intensity the brakes cannot deny.  The pile-up is inevitable.  Then the burial ceremony.  And the tears.  The creep of hopeless and intimidation and overwhelming loss.

And now what?

We grieve.  We listen to the music that feeds our soul and comforts our hearts and inspires us to never give up.  We give ourselves time to feel the absence of something that meant so much.  We allow it to matter, to sink deep within our beings to a place where we’ll carry the memory with us forever, to change us.  We recognize what it meant to us and why we invested so much in it.  And time passes.

And eventually… we pick up the pieces from the wreckage.  We build new.  We carry on, pouring our souls into a bigger, better dream, an upgrade, a re-engineered and creatively modified version of the original.

And sometimes… sometimes, the original is what we work on.  Because it hasn’t really died, or maybe to put it more accurately, it didn’t stay dead.  It rested in a quiet, dark place for a time.  And then it revived and sucked life back into its lungs and crawled out of the hole, clawing its way back to the living.  It is experiencing a resurgence in the light of day and has come back stronger than ever, determined to make it this time.  (If you need a soundtrack for this part of the journey, check out Rise Again off the same album by Need To Breathe.)

Because some dreams are never meant to die, and some are too great to stay dead.  Some are worth pursuing and passing through the pain to accomplish.  Hold onto the hope and never give up those dreams.