I have been re-reading some of my farming/gardening/agricultural books since my enforced vacation - partially because it's that time of year and I need to be getting ready, but partially because I am trying to think ahead to a future which, even if a job comes through as it will, will require a constant frugality and undergirding structure. This cannot happen again.
As I do this, I am finding that it is almost physically painful for me to continue reading them after a certain point. Physically painful? Reading a book? Me? Something larger is going on here.
And then, at 0400 this morning when I woke up to drop The Ravishing Mrs. TB off at the airport, the thought popped into my head "Driving Stakes Through Our Hearts". It just hung there, like words on a computer screen, softly blinking on and off.
It hit me later in the afternoon, when I was reeling between ferrying children hither and yon: the stakes we drive through our hearts are the ones we drive through our dreams. That's why reading such things is painful to me, why thinking of such things is painful - because it represents the putting aside or potentially even the death of a dream.
But the funny thing - the thing I never thought of before - is that the only person who, in the end, can drive a stake through our dreams is ourselves. Sure, I can blame other people, circumstances, bad weather, a lack of good coffee - but the reality, if I stop and look at it for just a minute, is that in each and every case, the stake driven into my own heart was done with my one hand on the stake and the other on the hammer.
It's confidence - self confidence, the idea that no matter what the obstacles, if I put my mind to it I can do it. It's that lack of confidence, that fear, that makes one - me - feel like I must kill the dream for some sort of vague sense of security which, given my current circumstances, is shown to simply be as wispy as a light morning fog.
The question: If a stake can be removed, will the hole heal or will it simply be a damaged dream, unable to fully function again?
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