What happens to a dream deferred?

I love that line from Langston Hughes' poem. The rest of the poem doesn't speak to me, it seems almost childish in a way. But that first line is haunting. Thoughts about dreaming have been on my mind a lot lately. Susan Boyle just jumped to the headlines when she competed in a British talent program singing a song from Les Miserables called "I Had a Dream." It too is haunting and the song has been in my head for many weeks now.

I've always regretted that I had no dreams when I was growing up. Nor any goals - and I think there is a difference really. I think a dream is a life's passion. I haven't had that. Goals are important and they are things you work for in life and even wish for but I don't think goals carry with them that passion that consumes you inside.

I don't think my parents really had dreams either. My mother simply wanted a happy life, which she has only had glimpses of from time to time. She wants a man to treat her well and take care of her. She'd like good health. But I don't know that she's ever had goals beyond that. I don't know that she's ever had a dream that she was passionate about. My dad was more of a dreamer - but he was all talk and never pursued anything he dreamed of doing. Maybe his were dreams deferred. Maybe they never rose to the level of dreams because if a real dream creates a passion within you it will drive you to reach that dream. Maybe his visions of the future were just well-intended goals that died from a lack of passion.

That legacy was passed down to my brother and I. My parents never encouraged us to dream to be anything in this life. There were no goals for us. No thoughts of college. No discussions of marriage and family or education or careers. Life was that thing you faced one day at a time. Life was survival. It was about working hard and paying your bills. It was about making a living and providing for your family. About having food on the table and having fun once in awhile. But there were no dreams. No planning for their future or ours. No retirement accounts, no college funds, no future, only now. Today, and maybe tomorrow at the latest, but no next week or next year or adulthood or retirement. No passion. No dreams.

I've grown up without any dreams. I've had goals and I've met a lot of them. I got a college education - and I enjoyed getting an education. There were times it almost rose to the level of passion but it was not something I planned for, it was a means to an end. To escape a family life that had fallen apart. It happened by chance. No funds were saved, no college prep classes taken in high school. My parents fully expected me to be a secretary, in our hometown, that was it. And being a secretary is noble and is work that needs to be done - but what if they had dreamed that I could be more? What if they had helped me dream of becoming more? Where would I be today?

I graduated and then did office work for a decade. I liked the job - I loved the people - but the job was going nowhere and neither was I. But still I didn't have a dream - just a goal. I went into law. And I think I'll be happy with this choice once my career gets going. But do I have that burning passion that consumes me and drives me to be as successful as I possibly can? No. At least not yet.

I used to "dream" of being rich. For nearly a decade I lived in a small town and often passed this huge onion field. And I dreamed of what it could be. I wanted that field. I don't usually take time to picture things and envision what they could be - but this was an exception. I pictured a lush estate, with a Tara-like mansion set back from the road and a beautiful iron gate at the entrance. I envisioned a lake with swans and weeping willow trees. I pictured the home having a grand staircase and off the living room french doors that opened to a beautiful music parlor with a grand piano. I was almost passionate about it. But can something be a dream if it is unrealistic? If there are no means to make it happen? Does it simply become a dream deferred? Or, if it was a vision that didn't carry with it that all-consuming passion was it really a dream at all or just greedy desire? The onion field is now a housing development. My vision has been scaled back to wishing for a mid-sized home with a fence for the cats, a non-galley kitchen with a pantry, a two-car garage, and a garden where I can plant beautiful roses. I'm almost passionate enough about it to call it a dream but the passion hasn't consumed me yet so perhaps it is simply only a goal for me to work towards.

I try to envision my career as a lawyer. There are goals I'd like to reach. If I could become passionate about some aspect of being a lawyer those goals might become dreams. There are problems in the world that I feel passionate about - abused children and animals, poverty, injustice. I have great compassion and when involved in a specific case I know in my heart I will be passionate about helping my clients. But I haven't developed a dream for where I want to see my career go. Probably because a dream requires life skills and a certain amount of self-esteem to believe you can make your dreams a reality.

Perhaps I have to start from a place more rudimentary than most. Perhaps my self-esteem must be more developed before I can develop a dream for my life, before I can become truly passionate about where I want to go and what I want to truly become. Because I believe you can't be passionate about something if there's some part of you that doesn't believe you are capable of turning your dreams into a reality. I'd like to believe that even now, at middle age with as much life behind me as before me that it's not too late to develop a dream. But I think I have to be intentional about developing other skills first, skills that will get me to a place where I truly believe that anything I set my mind to is possible. Without that belief any dream I may develop will merely be a dream deferred. Still, I think that at the end I would rather have a dream deferred than have lived a life with no dreams dreamt at all - that, I think, would be the greater sadness.