Have you ever reflected on your childhood dreams? What one finds interesting in them is how big they actually were, no matter the conditions in which one grew up. The naivety of your mind during your early life, along with the objects and entertainment provided to you, forged how you viewed life.
As a child, despite having a large yet not-as-fluffy bear, which my parents named Big Dave, I played most often with a set of little cups. You know the ones; each one just slightly smaller than the previous one, so that they could sit inside each other when stored away. In fact, there were similar sets at my aunt’s house, where the cups also had triangular bases. With these, I would take them apart and line them up on the ground, always from smallest to largest or vice versa. In addition I would stack them up either with the large cup or the small cup on the bottom. The latter was certainly no easy feat, since I mostly was on a carpet surface with these!
Somehow, this ordering of objects translated into one impractical dream that I have long since abandoned due to other interests, but allow me to describe it to you. In addition to growing up with these objects, I would watch and play a lot of sports with my siblings and cousins over the years. While watching, though I had the teams I enjoyed more than others, I found all of them to be exciting and interesting with their color schemes. Thus, for a long time during grade school, one dream in the back of my mind was always that one day, somehow, I would be able to play professionally for each individual team before I retired.
Now, while this does not seem too far-fetched, allow me to add that this dream was not applied to just one league or sport, but actually four, maybe five. For those that follow sports religiously, you know the four: football in the NFL, baseball with the MLB, basketball under the NBA, and finally hockey within the NHL. Each time I would go out to play one of these sports, which was sometimes done with make-shift, impromptu equipment, I would imagine myself gearing up for one of these squads and playing my very best for them! The fifth sport, interestingly, was a dream to race in NASCAR, but the “teams” in that sport get sort of complex and not as clear cut as the others, so was a little harder to imagine in my mind. This did not stop me from lining up and racing Hot Wheels and Matchbox cars on a living room rug, however!
As I grew up, it certainly became apparent to me how difficult this task was going to become. Not only was I a mediocre player in playing sports with my friends, but I found out just exactly how the sports world works. Reading about players having to sign contracts, and the amount of determination and loyalty necessary to succeed just in one sport with one team showed just what I would have to deal with. Thus, it became less and less likely in my mind that it would be possible to play for them all, and the interest I developed in the sciences caused it to fade into a hobby altogether. Today, I still enjoy a pick-up game in any sport, but I leave my lists and collections to my work in chemistry, physics, cartography and geography.
Despite the reality that ultimately attempts to thwart us, the boundless optimism of a child is certainly one to inspire, as they are never afraid to dream big. It is only those limits we run into when we fully enter the real world that make these dreams seem impractical. While we can then chuckle at our silly dreams as we realize their improbability, they actually helped to forge us into how we think and feel about the world. They become something to look back upon and remember who it is we actually are inside, no matter how far from ourselves we become. That said, while my goals have become be more realistic, I am still at a point in my life where my true self seems yet so far away.
Maybe if I make myself a map…
