Remembering to Leave Some Space in My Life for Dreams and for Aspirations

I have finally moved on in my life to that stage that has to do with being practical and with making the necessary compromises to survive in this life. Even if it took me almost 60 years to get to this point, I did. And, I guess, that is what really matters, isn't it? I want to say that getting to where I am today, is supposed to be what growing up is supposed to be all about. But you know what? Now I sometimes have this terribly empty feeling that now something terribly important is missing from my life. Until now, I wasn't exactly sure what that something was.

Stephen Sondheim, in the first scene of Merrily We Roll Along, gives us a wonderfully clear picture of what it means to be where I am and where a lot of you already are, as well. In this scene, Franklin Shepherd, a famous songwriter and producer, has been invited to be the main speaker at the graduation at the high school from which he graduated twenty-five years earlier. At his own graduation, he declared, "My final thought is a simple but mighty thought. It is the obligation we have been given. It is to not turn out the same. It is to grow, to accomplish, to change the world."

In the first scene of the play, the man we are seeing and hearing is the man he turned out to be. This play looks at Mr. Shepherd in a unique way. It starts in the present and moves one step at a time into the past, all the way back to that moment he spoke as his class's valedictorian. For the moment, you and I are only concerned with how he turned out and his own take on life as a grownup. What follows is an excerpt from lines from that scene.

"...[W]ould I be hanged if I told you innocents a few realities. I can save you guys so much pain and hurt if I can make you understand today that life isn't about doing the best; it'd about doing the best you can.

A goal is something you aim for more than something you achieve.

I'm thinking you better start by hearing the word 'practical' right here, right now. today.
Some day I guarantee you'll know 'practical' very well. Fate has a way of introducing 'practical' eventually.

And it's the same with 'compromise.' Compromise is how you survive. Compromise is the bottom line, let me tell you.

If you know now that what you're intending to happen ain't gonna happen the way you think it's gonna happen, because life has some ideas about your intentions.

Hey kids! Listen to us 'old guys' if you can. I know you don't see it, but some day you're going to be us."

That is a pretty sobering bit of "wisdom." As I was growing up, I harbored nearly impossible dreams and ambitions for myself. I, for one, did not want to hear the words "practical" and "compromise" and I knew for a fact that when I hit my stride I was going to conquer the world as a writer or something. I was going to change the world in a big way. So how did it turn out for me? I did not realize these goals. As you have already figured out, it took me a very long time to come to terms with the realities of life and to become a practical person. My wife is very relieved that I finally did that.

And understanding the notion of compromise... well, for too long, I had a very hard time reconciling that the way things should be done, honestly and ethically, was most not the way that things in life happened. People were as often as not less than kind and considerate of other people. The playing field was and is still anything but even in most endeavors. Politicians are... well, it suffices to say that they are politicians. I will leave it at that. The United Nations as an organization is something less than united. The world is not a perfect place. In fact, it is a fair statement to say the world is a certifiable mess and always has been, with humans at the helm.

Let's get really basic here. Eventually I figured out that I wasn't going to save the world any more than I was going to save even a single person from making some dreadful mistakes. Hell! I was so worried about saving the world that I wasn't paying attention to my own personal affairs. Bills did not get paid. I had problems at work, because of my notion that certain practices and situations shouldn't be allowed. I learned that workplaces are not perfect models of human dynamics either. In my own personal relationships, I made mistakes, in large measure because I was focusing on how I was going to make a large place for myself in the world. I didn't always think about what was happening right around me and about the people who were near and close.I did not think about the impact of my actions on the people about whom I cared the most. I shot myself in the foot a lot and kept on doing it over and over again.

Then one day, late in the game, I got practical. I made compromises. I have become a modestly functional human being. I took my dreams, my hopes for my life... my aspirations and I put them into a shoe box and put them on the top shelf in my closet. Out of sight and out of mind. These days, I am feeling pretty chipper. Yesterday, I even enjoyed one of the rare moments of survival in the face of adversity and of modest success.

But in the quiet moments, I feel a sense of loss. Sometimes I will take down that shoe box and take out each of the individual items stored there. I now understand that when we are young, we dream large and we do not fully understand the sometimes terrible price we will have to pay to realize our aspirations. So we chase after our dreams only to discover after it is too late to turn back the clock that what we were chasing was a nightmare in disguise. It wasn't exactly what we thought it was at first.

Now I know that a life characterized by simplicity is something to be desired and treasured. And yet, I have this craving, almost like the craving in an addiction, to go out and seek one last "hit" of aspiration and of chasing what is probably an impractical dream.

In my early fifties, I did just that. For three glorious, exciting, enthralling, emotionally devastating and totally disastrous years I lived on the edge and I felt alive, like I have never felt alive, before or since that time. And, wow, did I ever crash and burn at the end of the adventure. And you know what? I wouldn't do that again for a million dollars. But I have absolutely no regrets that I gave chasing my dream my best shot. At least I tried to get there. It was the only time in my entire life that I gave any effort my all. That felt good.

Then I accepted the fact I had to make compromises and to become practical. I was finally ready to accept that reality and to make the decision to become a more centered and practical sort of fellow. I have become Franklin Shepherd, at least in terms of buying into part of his philosophy about life. G'd help me. This is not necessarily the person I wanted to become. But reality is a hard task master and also, life goes a lot smoother for me these days.

Even so, I have those moments when I dream my dreams and still have visions of grand things I could do with my life. Somehow I feel the need to squeeze in a few moments like those into my days. Don't get me wrong. I love my life just as it is now. I love the people who are in my life now. I love being finally able to take care of them, to take care of myself and to be able to stand on my own two feet. That is a good thing. Most of the time. However, sometimes I have to escape from this safe existence, even if only in my own mind, to live that other life I could have lived, if things had turned out differently.