A friend of mine recently found herself in the most enviable of positions. She had two excellent job offers on the table and she couldn’t decide which one to accept.
The first one was well within her experience and skill set, rather like the job she’s been doing the last few years. The people seemed nice, and it felt safe.
The other job was in a field she has always wanted to work in. It was a ‘dream’ job, but it was much more unpredictable, both in what would be required of her, plus the fact that the chain of command seemed blurred and the personalities harder to read.
My friend was trying to get clarity. We discussed the pros and cons of both jobs. Just the thought of the second job made her visibly excited. It was clearly the job possibility she had always wanted. I pointed this out to her, suggesting it might be a sign of which path to take.
Her response was one I didn’t expect. She said, what if all our dreams can’t come true? She said life didn’t seem to go that way. That people seem to be doomed to suffer a ‘second best’ life and there is nothing we can do about it.
All our dreams are meant be lived and experienced. That is the golden potential of all our lives that is just waiting to be realized. It is not that all people’s dreams do not come true, it is more a matter of what we do on the path - our ability to keep following our hearts and to keep the goal in sight. So often people sabotage their desires - they get caught up in situations and behaviors that send them down convoluted detours and dead-ends.
The trick is to stay the path - to stay in integrity, to stay optimistic and to keep searching - and not to allow the challenges, disappointments and frustrations to derail us from our goal and purpose.
In his book The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho weaves a mythical fable around the task of finding, and living, our dreams, our Personal Legend. The Alchemist - one who can transform dross into gold - cautions his young acolyte against submitting to his fears:
People are afraid to pursue their most important dreams, because they feel that they don’t deserve them, or that they’ll be unable to achieve them…very few follow the path laid out for them - the path to their Personal Legends and happiness. Most people see the world as a threatening place, and, because they do, the world turns out, indeed, to be a threatening place.”
The aim, he says, is not to be deterred by our fears because the search is a divine endeavor:
“Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams, because every second of the search is a second’s encounter with God and with eternity.”
