Struggling With Balance: How Do I Dream?

Lately, I've been in a struggle to figure out what it means to live well in the context of what you hope for, versus what is. Shortly after I moved to this twin-island nation two years and four months ago, I adapted the phrase "It is time to admit to your dreams!" as the closing tagline of my emails. At first, this was my own therapeutic intervention for the panic that ensued after certain dreams failed to materialise. Then, this turned into a more obscure concept.

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Where my original idea was that you needed to dream big and put the bricks to that dream one on top of the other until you built it, my second idea was that my dreams, and your dreams only give us information about what we want based on the current information we have. Now bare with me, because I'm thinking as I'm typing about this one. What if our dreams are only the ushers to an unknown future? I have to admit, that in my life up to now I have been quite rigid about my dreams. I remember a conversation I had with my cousins who are almost a decade my seniors and we discussed dreams and how many goals we'd achieved for our lives. My older cousins, both a part of the workforce for several years, resounded with "Not nearly all of them." I found this interesting, and probed for more information. One of my cousins said that once you get out of school, it starts becoming harder and harder to control what does and does not happen for you.

Here lies my struggle: while I agree that there are no guarantees in this life, and once certain milestones are achieved, you become even more open to the circumstances of chance - Wait...what? Do I believe this?

Psalm 37:23 ESV / 7 helpful votes

The steps of a man are established by the Lord,when he delights in his way; 

Okay, so no, not really. Maybe if I believed in nothing, no higher power then I'd believe that I become more susceptible to the circumstances of chance as I get older, but here's the real dilemma: free will and nature versus fatalism. If free will awards every human the right to choose good or evil and nature reacts without justice, then how do I reconcile the goodness of God with the consequences of evil action or unjust nature (e.g. Mummies dying or natural disasters)?

Romans 8:28 ESV / 6 helpful votes

And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. 

Is this a contradiction? Many others have written about this before me; the struggle of seeing God as loving in the face of all that is hateful and unjust, so I won't repeat it here. I will just say that the latter verse doesn't promise only good in the lives of those who love God, but that He will cause the circumstances of a person's life to work out for good, regardless of how they originated. I would call this hope. One of the main dangers in the condition of depression is the complete loss of hope. Despair is the space where a person becomes convinced that nothing will ever change. My main focus in this post is on the idea of dreams as our vehicles to move through life and on living well as a result. A few posts ago I wrote about the importance of movement in keeping us hopeful about our future, and this is the next step.

What if one of the major causes of despair is that we consider our dreams as destinations instead of vehicles? In a world like ours where goodness is not the only factor at work, it means that 100% of outcomes can't be good. It means that everything we hope for, won't happen. This is true, but where God's promises step in there is hope - regardless of how events originated, God causes things to work together for good. Hope! If you believe Romans 8:28 then you have something to clutch to - something good will come out of every bad thing. If you believe in Psalm 37:23 then you can calm some of your existential angst with the hope that your delight in God and prayerful seeking might mean that you make better decisions than if you just tried to orchestrate your life on your own. Hope!

I hope you take this post in the spirit in which it is intended - this is a discussion, as always and in this particular post, you all peek at one of my struggles. I don't mean that the presence or absence of dreams is a direct correlate of depression, although it is well known that hopelessness is a clear feature of the condition. This is not a condemning position, nor one meant to offer causation for depression. Neither is this post intended to replace medical treatment or professional therapy. Take care of yourself as much as you can. This post is intended to raise the subject of dreams as energy that drives us forward. The intention here is to challenge you in the way you think about the things you hope for - MUST you have them exactly, or can you accept that your pursuit of dreams (whether they come to pass or not) might play a crucial role in walking you through the life that God intends for you?