Hindsight is 20/20.
As I’ve gotten older I can look back on the younger me. When I do so, I feel a range of emotions: excitement, regret, hope, fear, pain, sorrow, joy.
One that has become more prominent, as I’ve worked to be more honest with myself, is the recognition that his hopes and dreams are not my hopes and dreams.
In some ways that is good. Some of his hopes and dreams were stupid.
But most of them weren’t. Most of them were great.
And then life happened, and I gave many of them up. I compromised in big ways or small ways.
Sure, some of those compromises were the right ones. But others were driven by fear, or anxiety, or weakness.
I had a good conversation tonight over dinner about this with my wife. It’s still hard for me to talk about it, and I bet I haven’t fully faced the extent of my regrets.
But I also know that all of that is in the past. My dreams, my hopes, my failures, my fear, my weakness.
I can’t do anything about it.
Except learn from it.
I don’t have to arrive at some point twenty years in the future with the same regrets.
I don’t have to have another conversation about lost dreams, hopes that I gave up on, or goals that fizzled out.
One thing that has happened in my life over the last few years is that I am learning to finish things. Mostly, that’s a story for another day.
But it comes in here, because it has given me new hope.
Hope that I can commit to a big goal or dream, and see it through.
A huge part of that is doing something daily to move forward.
This email is one of those “somethings”.
And now it’s your turn.
What dreams and hopes do you have?