If you know me well, you know that, despite the fact that I do try to eat pretty healthy and stick to a Paleo-ish diet most of the time, there’s one food that I will always say yes to, no matter what. That food? DONUTS. (Or doughnuts. I really don’t discriminate in the spelling of something so delicious.)
Another thing about me: The Simpsons is one of my favorite shows. So when I heard a good friend of mine and his wife were heading to Universal Studios and going to spend a day in Springfield, I literally begged them to bring back a true Homer Simpson donut from Lard Lad Donuts. Being the great friends they are, they brought me one of these delicious monsters. I had NO idea what I was in for. What you see above is about 1/8 of the donut. I posted a photo of it in its glorious entirety on Instagram:
It only took me the weekend to polish off that bad boy. So. Freaking. Good. Now, although I COULD EASILY write an entire post about my love affair with donuts, today’s most will have a bit more depth.
See the caption of the photo, “DREAMS DO COME TRUE”? Of course used there it’s a bit of a joke, getting a giant Homer donut hasn’t been a ‘lifelong dream’ of mine. (Although it’s been pretty high on my wish-list for some years.) But as much as I adore donuts, I promise my dreams are bigger than that.
I’m not going to share those dreams with you today, maybe in a later post. But right now I just want to talk about the general topic of dreams. If there’s any message I want to get across, it’s this: DREAM BIG.
We’re told this a lot as we grow up, aren’t we? “You can do anything! The world is your oyster! You can be an astronaut or an artist or the President!” And what feeds our dreams more than anything? Imagination.
Isn’t imagination the best? What better delight is there than watching children play, dreaming up their wondrous scenarios of make-believe. And in their worlds, they can be anything they want. Their dreams do come true.
But somewhere along the way to adulthood, that imagination begins to fade. Somewhere between spending hours on the playground and spending 40+ hours each week in the office, we forget how to play make-believe- we forget how to dream.
Now of course this doesn’t happen to us all, and it happens in varying degrees. I know plenty of professionals who are fulfilling their dreams and who never let that sense of imagination and playfulness fade too much. But I still think we could all use at least a little more of it in our lives. Myself included.
I’m reading a book right now called ‘The Circle Maker‘ by Mark Batterson. This line hit me hard:
“Our date of death is not the date on our tombstone. The day we stop dreaming is the day we start dying.”
It’s so easy to get caught up in the day-to-day and lose sight of what really drives us, what we’ve been been striving for, what dreams have been in our heart for so long. When we forget, when we’re just going through the motions and ‘working’ instead of ‘working towards something,’ what are we doing? To put it kind of harshly, we’re losing life. We’re counting the days down on the calendar with no end goal in mind. We’re just….counting.
I’ve taken some risks to follow some dreams, but I can, and should, do so much more. We don’t grow when we’re comfortable. We don’t achieve when we don’t take action. And we don’t dream when we don’t imagine.
What dreams are in your heart? Why not just jump on in and make them happen? Or, are you unsure of your dreams? No time like the present to channel your imagination and see where it takes you.
You can do anything. The world is your oyster. You can be an astronaut or an artist or the President. (Hey, you probably still have time to hop on the 2016 ballot! 😉 )
Life is short, friends. Dream big.
Curiously,
Tori
