Making Your
Dreams Come True

   A new year, a new beginning. The air feels crisp and fresh instead of cold and harsh. You can almost feel the roots quivering beneath the frosted ground, eagerly anticipating the first day of spring.
   We're ready! they promise. Just give us a little bit of sun, and we'll grow into trees and stalks and shoots and flowers…whatever we're supposed to be. We're ready!
    How about you? Will this be the year you get closer to fulfilling your dreams?
   The concept is simple enough. "You can be whatever you want to be," adults told you when you were a kid. "Follow your dreams," said your parents.
   Wow, I remember thinking, adults really have things figured out. They're happy, they're where they want to be—I can't wait to grow up!
   Then I did, and I realized that adults are just as confused as kids…maybe even more so. At least kids have the luxury of knowing that they don't have to know what their dreams are yet. Call it their grace period. Adults, on the other hand, are adults! We feel like we should know what we want and how to get there. When we don't, we start to feel adrift and listless.
   Many of us have the outward trappings of the American dream—a decent job, a comfortable home, two cars in the driveway—but we don't have our dreams. Our utopian childhood mantras can't withstand the instant-gratification culture of adulthood, where quick, achievable, short-term goals are ideal. Forget spending hours playing in the dirt and watching slugs ooze along—we'd rather get the new flowers planted, fertilized, and watered, stat. Check that off the list and move on…
    But dreams don't lend themselves to Miracle-Gro. Sometimes, in fact, dreams are too shy to venture into the sunlight; they sit quietly in the shadowed corners of our minds, waiting to be acknowledged and allowed to grow. Nurtured, even.

Don't overlook your dream    Sometimes our dreams are so intertwined with the everyday aspects of our lives that we overlook them—they're hidden beneath layers of friends, families, careers, hobbies. Their very plainness can make them invisible. "Oh, but [insert hobby here] is just something I do on the side," we might say, even though our hearts beat a little bit faster just at the thought of doing it. "I've always wanted to go there/do that. I will someday." That "some" day always seems to be on the other side of the horizon.
   Make finding those dreams your goal this year! You can still make the standard list of New Year's resolutions, but put at least as much time and effort into figuring out what you really want as you put into the traditional goals. And don't worry about how crazy or implausible your true dream turns out to be—what seems overwhelming at first gets less intimidating when you actually start to explore the possibilities.
   Identify the three elements of your world that resonate with you the most. Wonder about them. Let them float around in your thoughts and see what happens. You might find that they intertwine…or you might find that one of them keeps bobbing up above the others. Congratulations! Your dream has crept into the sunlight.
   Once you've found it, the challenge becomes keeping it alive. It isn't enough to just hope your dream will manifest itself—you have to make sure that it does. One of the best ways of doing that is to mention it to other people. Once you've said it aloud to someone, it becomes more real, more certain. You've just obligated yourself to at least pursue the idea of the dream. And the person you're talking to may have had a similar experience and may be able to provide you with a better understanding of how to make your wish become a reality.
   Doing so will admittedly take a certain amount of luck…but then again, as my father likes to say, you make a good portion of your luck. You won't be at the right place at the right time if you don't work towards getting there to begin with.
   Your dream can take root. It can thrive. Once it does, be prepared—it may grow faster than you'd thought possible!

Lisa Howard is a food and health writer based Berkley, Michigan. When she's not experimenting with new flavors in the kitchen, she's writing about them. Visit her Culinary Blog & Marketplace at www.theculturedcook.com--her e-kitchen is always open!

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