Do we hold too tightly to the things that we want?

Have you ever wanted something so bad, convinced it was the only thing that would make you happy? Held on so tightly to something that you couldn’t see any of the other possibilities in life? If anyone says no, well I don’t believe you.  Because I think it is human nature to wish and hope and dream, and to find yourself consumed by those hopes. We hear it from everywhere, every day, “Believe in your dreams. Hold tight to what you want. Put it out in the universe and it will come back to you.” But what if by holding so tightly to these things we are missing the “amazing” right in front of us. 

I can wait FOREVER for something, not because I am patient but because I refuse to admit defeat. I’m monumentally stubborn. On many occasions I have found myself stuck because I can’t seem to let go of something I want. I have stayed in relationships long past their expiration date, held onto friends who were hurting me emotionally and waited for my dreams to come when what I really needed to do was move on to a new dream.

A really good example of this would be my last relationship, the one before JB, the Nigerian. This is the part where all of my friends who were with me during that relationship laugh and shake their heads because really, what was I thinking? Well, in retrospect, I was dreaming, not thinking. I was planning a life, a future and a family with a dream and refusing to see my reality. I was so determined to get to my goals that I couldn’t and wouldn’t see the reality staring me in the face. The Nigerian was a decent guy. He said all the right things and in the beginning he piled on the charm and seemed to want what I wanted. But the farther into the relationship I got the less and less that version of him showed up. Instead the version I got was half assed, dismissive and at times down right mean. My friends all saw this. My family definitely saw it and at one point they were staging an intervention. 

Thankfully I hit a wall (in the form of an ex-boyfriend) and was forced to really see. And the truth of my future was nowhere close to the fiction in my head. See I had been so determined to believe in my dreams, and visualize my goals that I was actually burying my head in the sand. I wasn’t paying attention to the million signs the universe had sent me that this was not the right dream. My determination had become my stumbling block and now the rerouting that was necessary to move forward involved moving The Nigerian out of my apartment. And while this was definitely un-fun, it taught me a valuable lesson. Dreams are meant to be held lightly in an open palm, not clutched with fear. They should be an outline, a goal, not a fixed destination. In remembering this I found what I really was dreaming of, a person who is my family, my home and my love, JB.