The Humanity Behind Every Dream Ever Birthed
Many of us have gotten quite good about sharing the “work” of our dreams. The hours, days, weeks, sometimes even years of hard labor we endured before we “made it.” All the steps we took before we published the book, made the movie, started the non-profit, held our inaugural event. I think on some level we glory in the labor scars we have to show for our ourselves.
But there’s another side to dreaming, to creating something from nothing, to birthing an idea, that fewer of us are willing to let the world see. It’s a darker side that doesn’t have a pretty bow we can tie at the end other than “survived.”
It’s the side that goes through seasons where it wants to give up at the end of every day. Where quitting seems like the best & only option left. It’s the side that is defeated by failure. The side that gets lonely in the life of an entrepreneur no matter how many friends are around because in the end it all falls on her shoulders. It’s the side that cries out in pain begging for an epidural only to discover she’s giving birth in a car on the side of an abandoned highway.
It’s unfortunate that we don’t talk about that side…the side of us that feels deeply the labor pains of our dreams. It’s unfortunate because that’s also that side that feels most deeply the joy when a new dream comes to life. It’s the side that grasps onto the thread of hope in seeing one client’s or customer’s eyes light up. The side that’s excited like a kid in a candy store when someone asks them why the labor was worth it. The one that lights up like a new mother when they get to introduce their newborn dream to the world.
That side is the humanity behind every dream ever birthed. And that humanity is as sad as it is full of joy, as much a quitter as it determined to persevere. But it has to be that way, you see. Because dreams are fragile, they have souls. And they require a dreamer to be as frail as she is strong so she can feel that soul & breathe life into it.
If you’re in that place right now…the one of sadness, the one where you want to quit, where you feel frail, take heart. Your dream needs that side of you as much as it does the joyful, strong side that perseveres.