Over (Dream On)

hey now, hey now / don't dream it's over...
hey now, hey now / when the walls close in ...
they come, they come / to build a wall between us
we know that they won't win


dream on, dream on, dream on, dream on, dream on, dream on til your dreams come true

I watched National Velvet last weekend. I was thoroughly struck by how supportive Velvet's mom was - they were both dreamers...her mom's dream was to be the first woman to swim the English Channel, which she did...and Velvet's dream was to enter her horse, Pie, into the Grand National, the largest horserace in England. Velvet's mom knew V was a dreamer, and even though V was only twelve, she wanted to do the horserace thing so badly that V's mom gave her the prize money she won from swimming the Channel to enter the race. But before she gave her the money, she told Velvet, okay, look. This is your big dream. This dream is so so big, it has to last a lifetime. And there will be a time when the dream is over, and win or lose the race, after the day, you have to let the dream go and move on to the next thing. It was like her mom was singing the Birds song "to everything, turn, turn turn..." to her. And in the movie, twelve-year-old Velvet understood it. I'm not sure twelve year olds now or ever can really understand and really let it go...but wow, what a powerful lesson to learn. To really go for a dream, all out, with every fiber of your being, and then when the dream is over, let it go, realize that dream needs to be let out of the BFG's jar and just float away instead of being blown through the dream trumpet into someone else's head. Wow. That'd just be amazing.

I thought about dreams. I thought about dreams being over. I thought about dreams that maybe I didn't dream because I was afraid to go after them...or maybe that I was afraid to dream because I was afraid I wouldn't be able to let go when the time came.

so, in honor of dreams that are over:

o is the shape of your mouth when you realize the moment has come--one way or the other, the dream is done
v is shape of the movement of your heart..down into the deep abyss, whether you accomplished your dream or not - the letdown of the dream being over. The 'v' is a lot deeper when you didn't achieve your dream. (I know.)
e is the shape of the squishy internalizing in your mind that you do after the fact. the turning in on yourself in a circle, going around and around until you run into yourself, only to (often) pick up the pen, start over again, and make the same shape
r is the shape of your soul moving on, starting at the bottom and working yourself forward and right along the graph of life, starting at the emotional low and moving up, then evening out - plateauing, as it were.

The worst part about over is that you have to do it over...over and over and over again. The best part is that sometimes you get second chances for big dreams.

over...and out.