When dreams don’t come true, what do you do?
When you’ve lived long enough and your dreams don’t come true, what do you do? How do you continue to live with a sense of happiness and balance in your life? After all, not all lives end happily ever after. In fact, few do. There are people whose lives are more fulfilling and rewarding than those of others, but there is an undeniable truth in the statement of the 19th-century American transcendentalist, philosopher, author, and poet, Henry David Thoreau: Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.
Does this sound familiar to you? Have you led a life of quiet desperation? Is the song you hoped to one day sing still with you as the twilight of your life fast approaches? Do you harbor uncomfortable, even sad thoughts about perhaps not being as successful as you hoped, not being the best of parents; Not being a worthy spouse, partner, son or daughter, movie star, celebrity, corporate executive, concert pianist, good friend, competent teacher, college graduate, Ph.D., or winning coach? Do you regret the fact that you never found that perfect love? What dreams never came true for you?
So when dreams don’t come true after a lifetime of struggling and working to make them come true, what do you do? How do you continue to move forward mentally and emotionally when you realize that the goals and objectives you have held close to your heart and lived with from day to day, maybe even minute to minute, will never be possible? ? So what?
The answer is quite beautiful. Every cloud has a silver lining, and every great sorrow has equal joy. No coin is empty of two faces. The sad, painful, broken or unrealized dreams with which many of us live can lead us, if we are aware, to a spiritual, supernatural, sublime and noble life as the incarnation of Grace Y gratitude – two of the most powerful and majestic virtues of life.
Grace it is a state of graceful acceptance of one’s destiny and station in life wrapped in the warm cloak of humility, peace, poise, poise, refinement, attractiveness, and positive reflection. Graceful people exude a natural beauty, nobility, and magnetism not found in normal people. Always positive and eternally cheerful, such souls carry the slings and arrows of life with great benevolence. They are rare jewels in a landscape of sand and brush.
Gratitude it is being grateful for everything that comes our way, even if what comes our way is frustration and sadness about dreams and things that never were. Having gratitude, especially for life’s not-so-pleasant gifts, requires enlightenment and spiritual understanding. It also requires us to be balanced and centered at every step of our life’s journey.
Few souls have grace unleashed. Few souls express gratitude for what comes their way. Most of us give thanks for things we think are blessings, like money, power, fame, fortune, worldly success, a partner, or a perfect relationship. However, how much grace and gratitude is not expressed in people who have these supposed blessings? Don’t they often express arrogance, pride, entitlement, elitism, superiority? However, grace and gratitude cannot be bought with worldly things. Often they can only be achieved by being assailed by great challenges, obstacles, hardships, sorrows, frustrations, pains, disappointments and the emptiness that often accompanies unrealized desires or dreams that were never but longed for. It is the pressure and heat of unfulfilled dreams that compress our spirit into the jewel of a noble soul. Try to buy grace and gratitude at the corner store. It can not be done. The only way to acquire these personal and heavenly accoutrements is through the fires of experience.
Summary
Living with the disappointment and anguish of unfulfilled dreams knowing they never will be can be extremely discouraging. The secret to managing them, however, is realizing the great gift of growing up in a noble life and living that life with grace and gratitude, two of the most powerful and spiritually uplifting qualities that comprise a man’s character. They are not easily achieved and have an excellent price. That price is often paid in the non-realization and failure to fulfill our long held dreams. However, the gift is well worth the price, for it takes us into ecstatic realms of a noble and tranquil state of being that only those who have experienced it can understand and appreciate. ~ finished
Copyright Richard Andrew King