What is the difference between chasing dreams and living dreams? Seems obvious, doesn’t it? Chasing versus living. In the one instance you are chasing, and activity that implies that you haven’t caught the dream, that you haven’t caught up to what you want. Living dreams just feels better. But are you really not living dreams – even when you are chasing dreams?
And what dreams are you chasing? Are you chasing you mother’s dreams for you? Your Father’s dreams for you? Your spouse’s? When was the last time you sat down and quietly contemplated where you were in life and where you wanted to go?
The funny thing is, though, that we don’t do that. We separate work from life and we separate work from fun. TGIF. Thank God for Friday. We live for our time off and our ability to do the things we really enjoy. We work for money, so we can pay to do what we want on our off hours. It is the culmination of the industrial revolution.
As living breathing creatures, we have basic needs for food, clothing and shelter. These needs were used to leverage us off our farms and out of our cottages and into the factories and offices of the modern world. These needs are so powerful within our psyche that we will do the most awful and mundane thing for food, clothing and shelter. On a physical level we are driven to survive. Survival means doing whatever it takes to create food, clothing and shelter for ourselves and our families. Survival drives us. It drives us to do. Survival does not care about us or our happiness, just our ability to procreate and live.
What is particularly awful about the drive to survive, is that it does not stop and let go when we have food, shelter and clothing. The drive pushes us to have enough to survive forever, to survive catastrophe, to generate more. I have heard that squirrels gather more the twice as many nuts as they need for the winter. At our most basic, we are squirrels.
The first step in transformation is learning to step away from your inner squirrel.
So many of us live the life of the squirrel. We go to work, and create a home. Join a church or community group to have a circle of friends that when pressed will get referred to as the “safety net”. “Chasing Dreams” we can all fool ourselves about the dreams we chase, but when we look at it, we are merely doing things to help satisfy our inner squirrel. Chasing dreams is not really a great place to be. Living a dream that takes you to a new dream, connecting your life into a series of processes that carry you on the river of your choosing to the destination of your desires.That is the real trick to living
First,we figure out what we like to do. There is something in your life that you will do, even if you don’t get paid. There is something that when you do it, you get sucked in, and when you finally lift your head, time has passed. A lot of time has passed. That is the thing that will help you live your dreams. That is what will begin to help you transform your inner squirrel.
