Story: Last year I bought a book of poems all written by African Americans throughout history. I stumbled across A Dream Deferred by Langston Hughes and immediately connected with his poem Harlem. Like I “get it tattooed on my wrist” connected with it. (Don’t worry mom, I didn’t). Instead, I got it painted on a wall in my bedroom which led to the branding of Hughes’ words into my brain as it was always with me through hours or homework, Netflix, and hanging out in my room.
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore—
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over—
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
Whenever anyone asked why I chose to paint Harlem on my wall instead of one of the other millions of poems in the world, including my own, that I could probably resonate with more deeply, I was at a loss. It took me months to understand the precise reason why I was so drawn to the poem of a dead African American man while I was so white, middle class, and millennial.
Today I understand that, too often, young minds such as my own have an idea in their heads of the way their life should go – a dream, a goal, a future. Seemingly, the privileged adolescents that I grew up with seemed to know, since high school, what they wanted their futures to look like: a specific college they dreamed of going to, a partner they dreamed of marrying, a house they dreamed of living in, a part of the world they dreamed of seeing, a career they dreamed of pursuing, etc. These things keep budding adults up at night as they creep through one’s consciousness and threaten to mask themselves as “identity”. With hope, young adults are at danger of becoming their dreams. I learned freshman year of college that life, honestly, does not give a shit about your dreams and who you think you are because of them.
Langston Hughes helped me realize that, after months of seemingly failing in college and being knocked off the path to academic success, I was looking at a dream deferred. My ideas of my future were not going to come to fruition, but they were not just going to evaporate; I was not just going to be able to pretend they were never a part of me. I was no longer the top of my class but instead, my dreams were going to “explode”, or “sugar over”, and maybe “sag” and “stink” and I was going to have to face that.
Lesson: The word “deferred” does not mean “to die”, but rather it means “to put off”. When a dream does not work out, it will not leave quietly, but it will transform into whatever it needs to be in order for you to find what life is supposed to look like for you. It will feel like an explosion or a rotten meat (not exactly sure what that feels like, but it doesn’t sound pleasant) or a sugary sweet. This is Hughes’ main point. BUT, yes there is a major “but” here, your dreams will not die. You will find a new dream or a transformed dream.
This is why we mustn’t become our dreams because dreams are not permanent, but they can be fleeting. We must not change ourselves to match our dreams, but change our dreams to fit us. And, honestly, the latter feels a whole lot better.
