The Dreams We Had as Children

Why do so many of us abandon those childhood dreams as we get older, as if they are indeed childish instead of constructively creative? I remember when I was a wee lad, and I would think about sailing away on a hot air balloon to lands far away, not realizing that hot air balloons have the highest death rate of any vehicle specifically built for transportation. And I also wanted a rack for cheese that would sit on the kitchen counter and hold all manner of cheeses, for the convenience factor it would offer. Little did I consider how quickly that same cheese would go bad without proper refrigeration. These and more dreams were perfectly good for me as a child, but as I grew up they were exposed for the inadequacies inherent in them. But was the problem in the dreams, or was it in what I thought had to be the concrete nature of them?

Now that I’m an adult (the term is debatable, but bear with me), I realize that each one of our dreams is representative of so much more, both when we were young and now that we’re older. I didn’t really want to sail off in a hot air balloon, but I did want to get away from all the issues I had at that age. Being a geeky child who had exactly one friend, and preferred to read rather than converse at parties, I don’t think I ever really felt like I fit in with my surroundings or my peers. And while I still don’t feel that way, I feel more like I have taken that metaphorical hot air balloon ride too many times to count, and the trip was in my imagination. That’s what reading has given me, the ability to take a trip far away any time I want, but occasionally I want to set down the balloon in a cornfield and speak with the natives.

So the dreams we have as children shouldn’t quite fade away, but they should be analyzed for their true meaning, or at least for something we can pretend they meant. I mean, one thing we seem to forget about children is that they tell it like it is, and they do the things we wish we could do but we don’t. As we get older, we tend to forget these things, or that we felt them and did them at one point in time. The dreams we have as adults are bridges that can span the gap between our two selves, if we just pay as close attention to them as we did when we were kids, and we try to make them happen. Or something.

Sam