Somewhere in between elementary school and now, I lost my dream. It was gone before I knew it. I didn’t even notice while it happened; it just wasn’t there anymore.
Ask little Claire, and she would’ve told you that having a dream in life is one of the most important things there is. So what happened?
One of my favorite Disney movies of all time is Tangled, and there are many reasons for this (one, of course, being that Rapunzel ends up with short brown hair in the end, but that’s beside the point). The main reason is because Rapunzel has a dream—she just wants to see some floating lanterns. In the beginning, she doesn’t even want to escape from her tower or Mother Gothel; she just wants to experience a little bit of the world. That’s her dream.
The movie also touches on the idea that once you fulfill one of your dreams, you get a new one. Life is a whole cycle of thinking up dreams, living them, and getting a new dream.
So what do you do when you don’t think you even have one anymore?
That stage is pretty much where I am right now. When I was little, I was certain that I was going to be a fashion designer, or a musician, or a novelist. Once I got older I realized that those weren’t for me, which was fine. The problem is, somewhere between then and now I just stopped thinking up dreams.
Part of this is probably because I am (officially) an undecided major. I think that I want to do entertainment journalism but I’m not really sure at this point. This isn’t even taking into account the fact that being a journalist can be really fickle work. It’s something I want to do, but it’s not something that I can say I have all of my heart in just yet.
Dreams, in terms of life goals, are hard to define, because it’s more than just a goal. It’s a desire that you feel yourself pushing towards. As Cinderella says, “A dream is a wish your heart makes.”
Truth be told, I don’t think Little Claire actually knew what a dream meant. I don’t think I understood the magnitude of it—and who does, really? I’ve come to realize that someone’s definition of “dream” varies from person to person. The word can have a totally different meaning to me as it does another person that I pass on campus.
All this being said, the concept of having a dream isn’t that crucial to a lot of people, and I understand that. Part of this, I think, is its similarity to the idea of having a goal. But the idea of “dreaming”, of coming up with a goal that changes the way you see the world and makes you want to complete it no matter what—that seems like the coolest thing to me, and that’s probably the reason I got hooked in the first place.
I have Walt Disney himself to thank for this. I’m not worried about not having a dream because I know that I will come across one eventually that I will devote myself to without a second thought. As Disney himself said, “If you can dream it, you can do it.” And that sounds just about right to me.
