We all have dreams. We all have that ideal image in our head of "thirty years from now", "five years from now", and "tomorrow" even. We dream. We do. And if you don't, get the hell out of my blog. Jaykay. But for serious- really? Get out. 

I dream a lot. I think about the future. I have learned, thankfully, to relinquish control of it. That's something I learned towards the end of last summer. I learned to set myself free. I learned that everything I could "plan" for my future could wind up being 100% different and yet I've spent 75% of my time planning for what never came to light. We're programmed to put all this energy into control because we have to feel like we have some sort of impact on our own life's path. We have to feel like WE HAVE THE POWER. So we control. We plan. We smother ourselves in this need to feel like we have it worked out. And it's all for a peace of mind that never comes.

When really, we have nothing worked out. We know nothing. The future isn't written. Even if you're a faithful person, most I've come across don't claim to think God has their life planned, but instead that God has a purpose for them. Those are very different things. So all this planning and all this control and all this unnecessary yet inevitable grasp on our life just boils down to nothing. It means nothing. In the simplest of terms, you could plan everything for tomorrow down to the way you walk through your corridor and out the front door, but it still has a 100% chance to not end up as you planned. 

100%. 

That statistic right there, that 100%, was thrown in my face the day Mom died. She didn't plan that. None of us did. None of us dreamed it. None of us envisioned it. It was nowhere, NOWHERE, in the dreams of my mother growing up. When she was 22 sitting in bed, thinking about her future, she didn't once plan to get cancer and die. But life doesn't go by your plans. Life doesn't cater to your false sense of control. You can't control your neighbor any more than you can control the man you're dating or that person driving in the opposite oncoming lane. Life doesn't let you control it. It rides free. It bounds. It does what it wants and it LETS you inspire it. It lets you impact it. It lets you react to it. And it lets you create. But never, never does it let you control. 

Last summer I realized that. All these plans I had for my future last summer are night and day compared to how I approach and feel about life now. Those plans are like distant stars- good ideas, unreachable, but shimmering because they exist. And only because they exist. They did nothing but sit there and remind me that they're there. And the more I grasped and clawed and swore I could control them- could make them happen- could get this person to love me this way- could get this friend to act that way- could get this job to add that layer- could get that family member to feel a certain way, the more I grasped at the idea that I had any power on this puzzle piece, the more I felt lost. You plan one thing and it doesn't go to plan. You feel defeated. 

You plan more. 

It doesn't go to plan. You feel more defeated and little bit less enthused. So you pick another plan. "I'll have that wife, an ideal job, and a child by the time I'm 25." Defeated. Optimism dies just a little bit. 

And sure, all while these plans are made and not met, good things are happening. Plans not coming true doesn't equal life being miserable. But the point is that you think you have control over something that is completely out of your control. You only have control over aspects of your life that you can tangibly and solely affect. 

You can walk up to that hope-to-be wife in the library and introduce yourself. But she can walk away and never think  twice about you. And until we realize ALL WE CAN DO IS TRY, that depressing feeling of having no control, the one that makes us feel helpless, hopeless, and powerless... it will continue to overwhelm. 

Relinquish and then TRY. 

Effort, people. Effort towards what we can affect is key. I learned that. I felt the craving for something grandiose. You know how sometimes you feel like you're not living the biggest life you could. You should be doing something bigger. Everything you want never comes. Everyone you want never falls in line. You lie in bed at night and think, "There has to be more to this." 

We have all thought that. If you haven't, you're settling. And it's not about always wanting what you don't have, that's not what that means. It's about pulling yourself to that next level. Upping your quality of life. Gaining more, doing more, impacting more. FEELING more. 

All of that starts with effort. The big picture always overwhelms, I think. Like my big picture, let's see. What was it last summer? Novelist, travel, marriage with the kind of love people crave. [The love most people think doesn't exist anymore. Blasphemy, I say to those people. Just flat blasphemy. The day that love doesn't exist anymore is the day I have no reason to live.]

The big picture is hard. It's vague and BIG. It always feels just out of reach, but like you've got it completely under control. "I will be married in three years, have a best seller and an adorable little adopted baby boy." 

Probs not, Miss Hart. Probs not. The quicker I let go of that plan and that timeline and the necessity to have exactly as my ideal image presented itself, the quicker I felt free. I could focus on the small picture. The small picture isn't about plans, it's about effort. You realize what you want in this immediate present and you take a step towards it. You don't shut the door and then ponder about what could've happened had you [enter action here]. No, you DO. You act. You walk out the door, you chase, you wake up each morning with purpose. That's the small picture. The small picture is now. Realizing that, you can literally break down your big picture. It's easy to dissect. 

I wanted to be a novelist? Well then I better damn well start writing again and stop thinking about writing. Write whatever I think, feel, toss about my head. Write it all. Write it on napkins, on trees, on the sidewalk, on a receipt, on a fogged window, on a mirror in eye liner, on a toilet with acrylic paint. Write it. WRITE IT DOWN. That's what I control. I control how and what and how often I write. And that effort propels me towards something I want. I focus on that. I focus on writing. I don't focus on being 26 and having one year until I should be a selling novelist. No. 

The small picture. It's relinquish with effort attached to it. It frees you. 

I dreamed of travel. "I will see the world," I would say at 18. I exhausted my research. I set timelines at 21. "I figure I'll continue on about my normal routine for six months and save money." I remember sitting at the kitchen table with Dad and Jill when I was almost 22. "Just a few months and then I'll be off traveling." I planned so much. I printed so much. I marked things down. I read.

I never acted. 

I thought about it every other day for the next four and a half years. I never acted. And yet--- I sat in my perfectly fine life and still felt defeated. Like my plans that I worked so hard for weren't falling in to place for some reason. They weren't happening. I was failing my plan. My life wasn't happening as I hoped it would. 

I wish someone had set me down and said, "Dyl, relinquish these timelines. Relinquish these images of ideal. Relinquish what you think your life should be. And then go BE WHAT YOU WANT YOUR LIFE TO BE." 

I don't have regrets in this area, don't get me wrong. I wouldn't change my past. But the point is that I sat there with these big thoughts of big actions and all I did was big planning.

Action. If you want nothing more than to be a painter, paint. If you want nothing more than to be a wife, put yourself in a position to meet people after people after people. Give yourself odds! That's action. Effort. That's control you have. I look back at how I used to approach life and it's like putting yourself in a box and labeling it what it's supposed to be. What you hope it is. 

It's like putting a piece of paper and a pencil in a box and labeling it "Story"... because that's what you plan for it to be. One day. Someday. 

Take the pencil out. Take the paper out. Write. CREATE the story. Take that control. The sooner you let plans go, the better the present becomes. And I hope you all understand what I mean by plans--- I'm talking the images you see as your life at certain check points. The kind of plans that set you up for defeat because life doesn't go by your plan. Otherwise, you're just putting yourself in that box and labeling it Failure. 

Don't set yourself up for that. Your ideal comes in all different shapes and sizes. Not to mention, your ideal right now will not be your ideal a year, two years, much less ten years from now. We evolve. It's our nature. This kind of need for controlling your future doesn't fit our nature. When I learned that, I felt life open up. 

Like literally open up. It was as if the world was at my doorstep and I could step anywhere I wanted because I had no limits because I had no ideal image because I had no must-have plan. I had hope. I trusted and realized that if I started acting and started making decisions that were true to how I wanted to live, who I was, and who I wanted to be, that it would push me in the direction I wanted to go even if I didn't know which direction that was. You trust if by acting honestly, making good decisions, your future will lay out in a way that you will be happy with because these honest to your core actions have lead you there. 

It's just truth. So let's ACT, people. Let's BE how we dream to be. Take your big pictures and break them down. It's hard, I struggle with it. But trust me, it's freeing. Something you want? Take Step 1 towards it today. Someone you like? Tell them. Dream of a different job? Work even harder and pursue it endlessly. Be true, act, have purpose and you will land where you want to land- even if you don't realize it until you've landed. If you relinquish and if you act for what you want and if you don't settle and if you attack life..... You'll wake up one day at 40, ponder over the past and marvel at your life's beautiful design in which you had no blueprint for. 

You could never have planned it so well. So stop trying.