what’s happened to our dreams?

Where have our dreams gone? As children we had many. Through high school and college they were, perhaps, refined. And now…? In my conversations with college students and recent college graduates, I’ve been talking and thinking quite a bit about dreams for the future…theirs’ and mine, specifically and generally.

My six-year-old daughter dreams of being an astronaut, a baker, a teacher, a mom, a veterinarian and a farmer. I tell her time and again that she can be all of those–even all at the same time. This is her dream. What is yours? What is mine?

Do we need dreams to propell us? To motivate and prompt us?
Do dreams fit within the context of everyday reality?
Are dreams meant to be achieved?
Or, is the point that they are just dreams–never intended to be actualized?
Why is it that so many dreams are quite easily derailed or self-sabatoged?
Is the journey of pursuing a dream more fulfilling than actually achieving it?

Two of my friends, Ann & Jean (names changed because they may actually read this blog), have very different experiences regarding their dreams:

For Ann, over the last few years she has witnessed, one by one, each of her college dreams come true. Now that nearly all her dreams are fulfilled, she’s come to realize they don’t measure up to what she expected them to be. Fulfilling her dreams have not fulfilled her drive. New dreams are taking place of the old.

In contrast, Jean had many ambitious dreams that have never taken shape. She has watched others take steps toward the life she always dreamed of, but never achieved. Today her dreams are being weeded out by new desires. She is consciously opting for a path which will likely not lead to the fulfillment of her original dreams. She’s okay with that trade.

I can relate with both friends. Perhaps you can, too. I have both watched my own dreams manifest before my eyes, and watched friends and mentorees take steps in their lives I was unable (or opted) to not take. Like Ann, I have been diappointed when the realities haven’t matched the expectations of my dreams.

So if we are disappointed by our dreams, or don’t really intend to achieve our dreams, what’s the point of dreaming? Is it simply the pursuit? The chase of a dream which motivates us to just keep going?

All I know is that a world without dreams seems like a sad and lonely place. It’s too depressing for me to consider living without having dreams to strive for. So I’ll keep dreaming–outlandish, dangerously challenging dreams. And I’ll take one step at a time. Maybe I won’t achieve those dreams until I’m in my 90’s, but they’ll keep me going.

Guest post: Book review: Mindless Eating

My friend Rachel was really jazzed about a book she listened to (on CD). CBS has promoted this book as a “Freakonomics of Food” and  ABC’s 20/20 ran a segment in 2007 on the book and its premise. I asked Rachel to write a guest post about the book, to which she graciously agreed. Following are her reflections.

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Recently, I enjoyed listening on CD the book Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think by Brian Wansink.  Originally a native of Correctionville, IA, Wansink’s Iowa connections appealed to me in addition to the book’s topic.

I thoroughly enjoyed his humor and also how he combines health, psychology, and consumer behavior. Wansink shares results from a number of experiments that he and his team of graduate students had completed, centered around why we eat the foods we do.

Wansink’s chicken wing example is fresh in my mind.  He and his students hosted a super bowl party for a number of college students.  During the party, the students were offered unlimited chicken wings.  In half the restaurant, the wait staff was told to clear the empty baskets of chicken wings.  In the other half of the restaurant the wait staff was told to leave the empty baskets of chicken wing bones on the tables.  They discovered that if the wait staff removed the visual cue (the empty chicken wing basket), the students consistently ate more chicken wings than the students for whom the baskets were not cleared. Students with no baskets before them did not realize how many chicken wings they actually ate, (the empty baskets had been removed and they no longer could see the remains of what they had gobbled up!) whereas students who visually saw the baskets of bones pile up conscienciously limited their consumption.

Later after listening to the analysis of this study, I went to a Mexican restaurant and enjoyed baskets of chips and salsa—and lo and behold the wait staff removed the baskets when they were empty, replacing them with full baskets and fresh salsa.  Hmmm….how many chips had I eaten, or for that matter how many baskets had I eaten? 

Throughout this book, you often find yourself in these Ah Ha moments, where you realize that you have been eating mindlessly.

Check out Mindless Eating at http://mindlesseating.org/ for more insightful information.

The ethics of eating.

Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life just keeps on giving. I wrote a book review, and several related posts after I read the book earlier this year.

On July 3, Speaking of Faith, a “public radio conversation about religion, meaning, ethics & ideas”, featured an interview with Kinsolver regarding the book and its premise. Krista Tippet, who conducted the interview also journaled about the book and conversation.

From Krista’s journal, I particularly appreciated this section:

          The real irony is that the way most Americans eat is elite in the extreme.
          This is hard to grasp, as crops behind some of the cheapest, easiest staples
          of American life–including that ubiquitous high fructose corn syrup–are
          underwritten by government funding. …And then there are, of course, the
          environmental costs, harder still to see and calculate and that we confer
          as a debt to our children. Some people give up meat, Barbara
          Kingsolver says; she has given up bananas, no longer willing to live with
          the fossil fuel footprint that is necessary to bring them all the way to her
          in Virginia.

Props to mk for passing along the Speaking of Faith link.

Tippet, K. (July 3, 2008). The Pleasurable Choice is the Ethical Choice. speakingoffaith.org

Guest blog–Job 36:26

I wrote a guest blog for my husband’s blogsite, witoozy.com. The post is about Job 36:26a (KJV): “Behold, God is great, and we do not know him.”

Follow the link to access my musings.