If you come up with some kind of wacky idea….and then say, “That’s my plan”….there may be some people in your life who will say, “welllllll….that sounds a little more like a DREAM….that doesn’t sound like a plan. You need to be a little more realistic than that. Now….what’s the real plan?”

So, you come up with a real plan.

Nuts and bolts….executable….relatable.

And you carry it out….or not….and years later, you wonder if the original dream might have been closer to the truth of what was right for you… in the first place.

Of course, that’s not me.

I’m a little more directed and focused than that.

Not….not really. Not so…..focused.

I was thinking about dreams and plans while I was driving the mail around yesterday.

Familiar plans don’t inspire fear in other people.

If the plan sounds like something they’ve heard of before, nobody freaks out.

Even if it’s something that sounds goofy like, “I plan to fly to the moon” the people around you, after the initial impression that you might be a little bit crazy, are going to think, in the back of their minds, “well….I’ve heard of that before….it’s been done…..maybe….maybe….he could do it. Yes…maybe he could do it.”

When you’re wearing ruts in the blacktop….running the same route in the same way, year after year, you understand “the familiar”.

The familiar is a salvation. The familiar lets you endure monotony. The familiar doesn’t challenge you all the time.

I wondered if a plan isn’t just a dream that we modify a little so that we don’t scare the people we share it with?

We say, “I’d love a small place at Myrtle Beach…maybe a condo…” when what we really mean is that we’d love to own our own island….with a float plane….and drinks made out of fresh coconut milk.

Reality is such a dream killer…but we do let the dreams die easy, too.

I don’t know what makes us give up so easily.

Maybe the way to let the dreams exist without squashing them is to figure out a way to take care of every bit of the nuts and bolts, day-to-day living…handle all the required stuff with grace and style….and then maybe we’d have time to mention the “dream” without scaring anybody.

You can dream after you finish your chores.

It could be, too, that when you become a parent that your focus switches a little from being a dreamer to becoming a “dream facilitator”.

Maybe my job now is figuring out a way to make the people around me comfortable with the thought that something that they’re dreaming about could become a reality?

There’s something noble and good in the facilitating part, too.

And…it does take the heat off of me….if I can’t have my dream, whatever it might be, maybe I won’t notice it as much if I’m trying to help somebody else live their dream?

They say that children learn what they see. Maybe to see their parents figure out a way to handle life and dreams together….to see the blurred line where the two exist together with ease…maybe that’s the best legacy I could leave for them?

To let children see that planning to dream is a good thing to pursue….and that dreams can work out…would be a good lesson.

“don’t look back” David Wilcox