{"id":339,"date":"2007-11-18T06:38:04","date_gmt":"2007-11-18T10:38:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sarahdopp.com\/blog\/?p=339"},"modified":"2007-11-18T06:45:15","modified_gmt":"2007-11-18T10:45:15","slug":"the-dreams-the-attachments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sarahdopp.com\/blog\/2007\/the-dreams-the-attachments\/","title":{"rendered":"The Dreams, The Attachments"},"content":{"rendered":"
Heads up, this content is 18 years old. Please keep its age in mind while reading.<\/div>

When I was nineteen, I never expected I’d ever live in China. The thought didn’t even cross my mind when I set foot on the plane to Beijing — I was just going for a 5-week study abroad trip, that was all. Three months later, when I was happily settled into a Chinese apartment and teaching English, I never expected I’d ever live anywhere other than<\/em> China. Another month later, I was back in the U.S.<\/p>\n

I dream dreams, I set goals, I make plans, I form expectations, and I get attached to them. Then time moves forward, things happen that I can’t control, and the scene changes. I blink, bug-eyed incredulous that this is my life<\/em>, and then I shake out the cobwebs and go back to the whiteboard: dream new dreams, set new goals, make new plans, form new expectations, and get attached to them all over again.<\/p>\n

The dreams, the goals, and the plans are important — even if they change, they still guide my decisions. (“If you’re not working toward your own goals, you’re working toward somebody else’s.”<\/em>)<\/p>\n

But the expectations lead to mistakes, and the attachments cause pain. And the most I can do is get used to those changing and relax when they make me uncertain — they’re not gonna go away.<\/p>\n

Tonight I am sitting down with a blank canvas, trying to carve out my dreams again, and it’s hard work. It’s a process of finding the intersections between “What do I love?” and “What do I want?” and neither of those questions are easy to answer when I’m asking myself to be specific. I look for the shortcuts to these answers, thinking back to last time<\/em>, to past dreams<\/em>, to the constant threads in my life, the themes, the values, the ideals. If I can keep the big picture abstract, it starts to forms a story that make sense.<\/p>\n

Everything is a project — it’s all about being able to make the projects happen.<\/em><\/p>\n

It’s all about the words.<\/em><\/p>\n

It’s all about creativity, creating, and creating opportunities so that others to create.<\/em><\/p>\n

It’s all about the people.<\/em><\/p>\n

But if I get any more specific than that, the details become almost arbitrary — a list of ideas that are taken seriously. A painting that will never be real. An exercise in belief and impermanence. A direction to look when I wake up in the morning, because I’d rather walk toward a mirage than stay in bed.<\/p>\n

It’s not about obtaining what I’m looking at.<\/p>\n

Building a life for myself in China was the best thing I could have done that summer — I needed the freedom, the responsibility, the home, and the perspective shift. I needed to believe I would be there for the rest of my life. The fact that I left in October didn’t negate the importance of that intention — it just prompted a new phase for the dream. And I got everything that I needed.<\/p>\n

Dreams don’t get met. They get honored.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Heads up, this content is 18 years old. Please keep its age in mind while reading.When I was nineteen, I never expected I’d ever live in China. The thought didn’t even cross my mind when I set foot on the plane to Beijing — I was just going for a 5-week study abroad trip, that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,2,44,31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-339","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adventures","category-personal","category-philosophy","category-the_creative_life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarahdopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarahdopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarahdopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=339"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarahdopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}