Quo Vadis?
Where we you going?
Life really doesn’t care where you are, or where you have been. It doesn’t care about the mistakes you have made or the bad habits you may have picked up along the way. It doesn’t care how many people you have hurt, or how many people hurt you.
It doesn’t give a hoot how stuck and complacent you may feel.
It isn’t concerned with how old you are. If you are married or single. Fat or fit. Beautiful or on the darker side of ugly.
Life doesn’t care for any of it.
She is a demanding taskmistress.
She will relentlessly ask you questions.
She always wants to know where you are going.
If you don’t have goals, dreams, or even a minute sprinkling of desire, consider yourself as a part of the living dead. A small part of the unfulfilled, meaningless, robotic, automatons; who exist only to feed the ever growing and self-consuming economic system of perpetual progress.
I refuse to believe that things this hopeless.
I believe all human beings, in all circumstances, and without exception, are full of infinite possibilities, stifled by unfulfilled longings, and magical dreams.
We all have dreams.
The dreamers and the non-dreamers alike.
We know what we want.
We know what we want. We dream, but we are often too tired or perhaps too distracted by our comfortable living, to ever reach out and touch them. Our dreams are like a beautiful breathtaking mountain, that we convince ourselves, we are too tired to climb.
Nothing will ever happen unless you do the following.
- Awaken the dormant dreams inside of you.
- Write them down.
- Write it down again in minutest detail.
(Write down all that you already have, all that you need, how much time it will take, how much it will cost, and most importantly why you want it).
- Break it down into small chunks, manageable tasks.
- Find the time to do it.
(Don’t lie. Steal some time for yourself).
- Find the money.
(Don’t get discouraged. Money is a story).
- Dig Ditches.
(Don’t ever question, deviate, or change you plan, once you have it in place. Don’t second guess yourself, until you have conquered and achieved some tasks. Adapting to change is important, but often it’s not change we see, but a way to quit. Just keep waking up each, and every morning, and dig your ditch. One shovel full, or a hundred. It doesn’t matter. Just keep digging ditches. Every day).
Dreams come true.
They don’t come true by accident.
It has taken me fifteen years of quietly, silently, unnoticeably, and unprofitably, dig my ditch. I realized long ago that I have a talent and can express myself through photography. Recently I realized that unless I execute a specific plan, and hustle relentlessly in its pursuit, I will die with great regret.
In the parable of the talents (Ten Minas), I have always seductively played the role of the slave with only one talent. I was never quite the zero, but certainly not the lucky, special, son of a bitch, who was gifted five or ten. They were truly lucky. I drew the short straw.
How wrong I have been.
How wrong I had been to run and hide. How wrong in avoiding and defending my inactivity, and my inability to even accept a compliment.
I realize today that not following your dreams is as tiresome as following them. It takes just as much work. It takes just as much time. It produces a different result.
It is a lot more fun to follow your dreams. The days are filled with less tears, or at least happy ones. The days are filled with laughter, joy, and a contagious energy that cannot be contained and demands to be shared.
I hope you dream a little today.
Scratch that.
Dream a whole damn lot.
List all your important commitments, and all the things that you love to do, and figure out where you can steal some time.
Get a shovel.
Start digging ditches.
There is no magical time to hammer that shovel into the ground.
Just grab.
Dig.
Toss.
Repeat.
The ditch will never dig itself.
