Do You Know What Your Dreams Are?

“Maybe no one can make your dreams come true because you don’t know what they are.”

I heard this line in a Lifetime movie recently and it keeps coming back to me. What are my dreams? What do I really want out of this life? If someone asked me those questions and honestly wanted to know, I really don’t think I could answer them. Could you?

As we start the new year, I keep coming back to this and I realize that I've never really set goals or said "this is where I want to be in so many years". I was never one of those people that said when/if I wanted to be married by a certain year, or do this by a certain age, so when I get to a certain age I'm not sure if I've reached what I should be reaching or not.

In some ways I think this is a good thing because I don't fail at not reaching something, but then I wonder if I'm just wandering around this life aimlessly because I've not put something out in front to strive for.

But even now, as I think about this and contemplate setting goals or defining what my dreams are, I really can't do it. I don't have a big birthday coming up this year, but I have one in two years and it seems like I should be able to say what I'd like to be doing or where I'd like to be by the time it comes along, but I just can't. There's absolutely nothing in me that points to some ideal place I want to be when that time comes. 

Is this normal? Have I gone insane? 

Television and movies and books seem to tell us that we should have these kinds of goals, that we should define what our dreams are and go after them. Magazine articles list for us the things we should do before a certain age - "30 Things You Must Do Before You're 30", that sort of thing. And should we just assume we're failures if we haven't done those things by the time we're 30? Or even 40?

I'm not sure most of my friends have goals and lists they're striving for. I don't know if they have dreams of who they want to be. If they have, it's never something we've talked about. Sure, a lot of them have said they want to be married by such-and-such an age, but for most of them, they aren't defined by that and I don't think they feel like they've failed if they aren't married by that age. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe they all do have these kinds of goals and dreams and it's just something they keep private and work toward on their own.

I don't know that this is actually bothering me, but it's certainly making me think. And that's always a dangerous thing...

Happy New Year everyone. If you have these sorts of dreams, I truly do hope they all come true.