LJ Idol - "Have memories, not dreams" (promt = some assembly required)
There are some stories you can only tell. Stories so unique or ridiculous that they can and will only ever be told by one person - like my stepfather, who used to be in the merchant navy, rescuing a deaf family from an escaped lioness in a zoo in Singapore, of all things. Unique and ridiculous.
One of his sayings is “have memories not dreams.” That’s why he joined the merchant navy in the first place and why he stayed for long enough to go around the world three times, the saying he has infected all of the neighbours with, and why my baby sister is departing for the southern hemisphere in less than a week.
Like any good accountant, at 2am one day this weekend, I was sitting barefoot on the carpet in the office in our house surrounded by piles of papers that were nearly six months old, and clearly facing the reality that I was holding pieces of my dreams, of my future, in my hands.
The accounting function that I run for the charity I volunteer at has encountered some minor difficulties lately. Difficulties primarily of my own creation, caused by faults on my side amongst other reasons.
I love accountancy, which doesn’t mean that it is always easy, but I do love it. When, in my head the minor difficulties became major ones, my desire to take the well used escape route - to jack it in with the volunteering, and turn my back on the qualifications I have worked for - was mounting.
I have recently also been surrounded by many people who believe in me, and in fact believe in me more than I do, as well as numerous people both able and willing to offer me enough practical assistance for me to be able to solve my problems, or at least begin to.
It took sitting on the floor at that time in the morning amongst the papers I was dealing with for me to see that I was holding my dreams in my hand. When I really realised, maybe for the first time ever, that no, I’m not going to get something for nothing out of this life but at the same time that’s such a great thing, because it means that what I want, I can actually have by following the right plan to get it. There’s no need ever to sit be-moaning my lot anymore because it has put my dreams right within my own grasp.
And no, they’re not given, they do come in pieces; rewards for those little hurdles I will cross at one time along the way, until the future that I want is the present I am standing in. Until I have built my dreams together from the pieces I hold, and until ‘memories’ and 'dreams' are the 'after' and 'before' of the same thing.
The journey ahead may well be a long one but now it is a journey I am equal to.
I feel changed. I feel ready. I feel capable of telling the story that only I can tell.
Get set…
Bring it on.