I’d like to share with you some lessons I have learned from my personal letter collection.
Several weeks ago I published a newsletter titled FORSAKE THE DYING DREAM. For this newsletter, I want to share what happens when you dreams die, because I have had plenty of them never come true. I understand that many people fear setting goals, or trying because they’re afraid of failing.
Well, I know exactly what happens when dreams die and what happens when they fail. I keep 10 journals, and in 2 of them, I can tell you exactly what I did, what I read, and what I watched on which date from the past 2-7 years.
I state this because many people might just forget when they haven’t accomplished something, or put it to the back of their mind when an ambition never came true. The flipside of obsessively archiving my daily life is leafing through sweet letters from myself and reading where I was hoping my life would lead at some point: I have little notes of encouragement from myself from a couple of years ago, stating, You’re going to land that literary job in Amsterdam, secure a place with a balcony, and start a PhD program where you’ll name your dissertation GET FREE <3 with little drawings and hearts inked everywhere. The reality is this: I was rejected from numerous jobs in numerous places and in numerous industries at that time—all of which, painfully, I can probably detail to you from my letters and archive. Additionally, not just do I have written evidence of various career ambitions (at one point I was studying to apply to be a Foreign Service Officer with specific determination to work with minority youths in Belgium), but I also have evidence of what happened after the rejection came: detailed journal entries of crumbling in bed at night, meeting up with friends and prior lovers in cities, baking cinnamon rolls at questionable hours of the night: but most specifically, being met with the bruises to my ego, and the lasting effects of rejection in my psyche.
I’m not afraid to fail, because I’ve failed so much. I’ve experienced what it feels like to be rejected and have contemplated giving up everything I worked for.
But I don’t give up—I want to experience the success of my efforts, because I know that when I land something, I’ll appreciate it to an incredible degree.
Here’s the lesson I’ve learned from my daily writing and my letters, and where most dissatisfaction comes from: not trying enough.
Bear with me, here. I teach about the essentiality of class consciousness in my university classes, but the awareness yields different results in everyday life. For example, I have noticed that many people feel dissatisfied with their lives because they want the supreme feeling that comes from not having something and succeeding in obtaining it. Many people are enamored with stories of people who come from nothing and live amazing, fulfilled lives—but that appreciation stems from being without, and knowing wholeheartedly what that was like.
So essentially, they “did it” until they made it. When other people ask me why they think they’re unhappy, although they’ve reached pinnacles that they otherwise didn’t think they could conquer—I tell them that I don’t know. I feel good that people come to me about advice, but sometimes, I’m alarmed by their questions and confusion: such as the six-figure breadwinner contemplating why he isn’t happier, or the successful businesswoman who feels accomplished but alone. And then, of course, there are people striving for the world but not necessarily willing to do what it takes to yield the results they want. They are sometimes the most unhappy, and when they rationalize what they feel like they should have, the answers look like this:
“I just want to travel the world.”
“I just want to be financially free.”
“I don’t want to have to go to work for anyone, or work at all.”
These are incredible aspirations— but I have to ask, honestly, why people think this is what they deserve. Sometimes they get offended by this question, but they know that I don’t mean any harm. Such a small, narrow amount of people in the world get to experience this sort of freedom, and ideally, many people deserve the best—but realistically, no one deserves the worst. No one deserves being born into inescapable regions of poverty where hard work yields no progress or success, and where dreams don’t die because they were never born.
When you don’t try, nothing happens. When you do try, things happen—even if they aren’t what you thought you wanted, or what you needed. What happens when dreams die when you tried to make them happen, is that something else will replace them. Your ambitions will grow something else alive and you get to strive for it, and learn from it, and land among the place of dreaminess and acceptance that you’re creating a life you’ll be proud of, and know that your time was well spent. You made that time, that effort, that anxiety, that depression, that ambition all yours, and get to experience where all of that magic leads you.
(photo by: Bruno, @onorblog on Instagram)
Love this thank you, now let me catch up on my dead dreams 🤣🏚🏠