Hindsight at the end of a year

*via Widerbergs

I have a long habit of journaling, although it's not the tidiest habit. My entries are random. Sometimes dated, sometimes not. Deep thoughts and feelings mix with grocery and to-do lists and long-range plans and snippets of poetry and scribbled titles of songs or books I don't want to forget. So many of these notebooks find their way into my life that from time to time I need to cull them down into a manageable pile.

I was doing so recently and noticing the patterns. For years I've been writing down dreams, my vision of how I'd like my life to be, things I'd like to do, places to go, things to accomplish or experience. I have big dreams and little ones and recurring themes too. It seems to keep me focused, when I feel lost, to remind me of the core of myself, those unique things about me.

I felt a tingle down my back as I realized that two of my biggest dreams have happened in one year. Visiting Europe (in this case Paris, which was enough for me, for quite a long while) and of much more long term impact, becoming pregnant with my first child.  I had boiled down my life's biggest dreams to a list of only 5 things and these were 2 of the 5! And it was such an amazing feeling to know that dreams really do (or can) come true.

I've spent years pining for these dreams. Well, pining is such a sorrowful word. But looking forward to, hoping for, planning for, waiting for and never quite sure if or when they would happen. And now, like some kind of sparkly dust magic, they finally appeared. But it wasn't sparkly dust magic, it was the work of years, the slow grinding wheels of time.

At times I've felt so impatient. Now! Now! I want it all now! And it didn't come. And it didn't come. Seeing that they did come, in time, gives me more of a hope for the future, realizing that while things might not unfold on a timeline I would have chosen, new and great things can be waiting somewhere out past the horizon. It reminds me how petty and childish my timelines and demands can be. It reminds me to stop and enjoy the nowness of now, the dream I'm in now, instead of always wanting to be in the next. But it also reminds me of the power of having dreams in the first place - setting my sights on something, big or small, and trudging forward to meet it, instead of waiting for it to find me.

I have been busy enjoying the dream that's unfolding right now and I think I should... But I don't want to forget to find new dreams too, when the space in my heart is ready for them.

I hope you're dreaming up big things for 2012...