Till My River Runs Wild

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

MARY OLIVER

I’ve been thinking about the dreams and instincts and Knowings of my childhood. My natural way of being back before the world and all of it’s improbable expectations and toxic insistence mucked things up.

Back before the forces external to me superimposed all those limiting beliefs on my vulnerable mind. Before those invisible pressures slowly, tightly wrapped my vibrant, rainbow-colored threads into a small, gray, insidiously self-mistrusting ball. Back before any of those influences worked their soul-numbing voodoo on Little Girl Me.

Before all that craziness there was a time when I understood myself, felt myself, trusted myself, and knew the Truth of things. And from that place—without realizing it or having words for it—my longings and imaginings held much greater sway. They were inextricably connected to my sense of self, and I respected them as such. Revered them, even. They were me, and I was them. One with my dreams.

I did not require formal goal-setting to access these dreams. There was no five-year plan or spreadsheet. No Franklin Covey planner. No Agile process. No career coach. Just me and what I desired and what I loved and what I Knew. And it never occurred to me that I could not have—or be—what I wished for.

According to my memory (which in full disclosure is notoriously inept) these dreams were not usually material things.¹ They nearly always centered on what I would “be” when I grew up, as mostly defined by what I would do for a livelihood.

And one by one, these dreams captured my imagination with the full force of their unique potential. Each one felt like an obvious and completely realistic choice I could make for my life. Across my youth I imagined…

…I would be a farmer and spend my days caring for animals amid beautiful, rolling, green hills…

I would be a story-writer and an artist, crafting wild adventures and illustrating my own books…

I would be a marine biologist, diving deep beneath the waves to explore the magic of the seas and swim with the dolphins…

I would be a journalist, chasing exciting new experiences and events around the globe and sharing important news with the world…

I would be a genealogist, investigating the mysteries of human connection and piecing together the puzzle fragments of people’s heritage (hoping always to uncover thrilling family secrets!)…

I would be a perfumer, experimenting with the most exotic and intoxicating scents; blending exquisite potions to captivate the senses…

I would be an architect, designing gorgeous, elaborate, and innovative homes (always homes) to suit the precise needs and diverse lifestyles of every unique individual—with special fascination for how to cleverly maximize small or awkward spaces…

I would be an actor, breathing life into imaginary characters or depicting real-life people; transmuting words on a page into vivid tableaus and relationships…

Of course I aged-out of some of those dreams (namely the farmer one [that’s me above on the right, in a preponderance of pink that is altogether out of touch with my agricultural efforts]) and reality-checked out of others (I hate swimming and am afraid of the deep ocean, so marine biology was a non-starter).

Skill set deficits proved barriers for some dreams (my dyscalculic self did not realize how much math was involved in architecture), while others ended up just feeling sort of inaccessible (how does one even learn about becoming a perfumer in a pre-Internet world?).

Ultimately I did attend a university selected in part for its well-rated journalism program, though I never pursued this course of study once I got there. And I did finally decide to major in theater one fateful night when a freak tornado on my college campus spurred a frenzy of heightened emotion, prompting me to feel my feelings and pay attention for a flickering moment to my desperate, tiny inner voice.

But a decade later—massively disillusioned from pounding the pavement as an insecure and noncommittal actor in New York City, angry and heartbroken from a string of mismatched romances that ended in train wrecks, plagued by crushing anxiety about my finances, feeling generally disconnected and purposeless, and poised to get married to a similarly struggling actor/director—I found myself slowly acquiescing to the very practical pressures of “grown up” matters.

In an effort to save money for my wedding I took a decent-paying, two-week temp job with a mission-driven, civil rights-oriented nonprofit. Two weeks stretched into two months and soon became an offer of salaried employment. With reservation, I accepted the position but planned to stay for just one year.

(I did not want to be tied down to a permanent full-time job, still desiring the flexibility and freedom I felt my actor’s lifestyle required. And I was especially wary of the commitment because I had recently accepted a different salaried role at a marketing agency and quit a mere month later to take a role in a film. Blech. Cue icky feelings about myself for seeming flaky and unreliable.)

But this decision and the timing all felt very mature and responsible. It gave me a new-found sense of direction and accomplishment; two things I’d been sorely lacking. Years of doing every odd, flexible job under the sun to pay my bills—and feeling mostly that these jobs were miserable and vacuous and on occasion even ethically compromising²—had left me jaded and cynical (both qualities wholly unnatural to my disposition).

And even though I never enjoyed the work itself, I soon found myself surprised by how superficially good it felt to be doing something that seemed “important” and in-service of a meaningful cause. I unconsciously convinced myself that this was my path to purpose. The way I could get back to feeling whole and valuable and connected. The feeling I vaguely remembered from some impossibly long-ago time when I was a little girl.

This is how it all started to go down. My imperceptible shimmy across the dance floor of life. I kicked off the party bopping and grooving with wild abandon, and for reasons so complex and jumbled I’m not sure I’ll ever fully understand—

(Lost steam? Dancer’s fatigue? Comparison anxiety with all those kids who took hip-hop classes and had real moves? Peer pressure from the insecure bullies who were scared to bust their own moves, but made sure no one else had a moment in the spotlight either? Afraid of drawing too much attention to my own brand of ecstatic dance?)

—step by step, I slowly choreographed my awkward way over to join the wallflowers. The isolated and forlorn place where dreams go to die. (I’m imagining the Memory Dump from Inside Out.)

In my next post I’ll share what happened after I got stuck in the illusion that I needed permission to dance.

Spoiler alert! My dreams are not dead…

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1. With one notable exception that was a defining episode of my youth. Perhaps I’ll write about that another day. ↩︎
2. This topic definitely deserves its own post! Where to even begin? ↩︎