Dream Pursuit, Essential Is The Journey Along The Way

Respected enlightenment and new age thinking has allowed many to believe that failure is temporary, is part of a learning process, a stepping stone to future ascension and if you never quit, to eventual success.

Is that what you think?

Not all in prominent circles agree with that assessment.

Some feel that at some point, in the pursuit of your dreams, if you continue to fail that maybe you should rethink your current pathway and consider another one.

We don’t agree, especially if you passionately love that endeavor, but we will keep an open mind and present another view.

In a May 29, 2018 article written by Mr. Theo Tsaousides Ph.D. in Psychology Today, he asks, “But how many times can you fail before it is time to quit? When do you decide that it’s better to give up than to force yourself to keep chasing a dream that doesn’t seem to be materializing? At what point does quitting become the best option?”

Or as Mr. Kevin O’Leary so often in sardonic tones advises on the investment television series Shark Tank, it’s time to take that product out behind the barn and shoot it.

Searching questions indeed, even if those of us who are pursuing our life dream do not want to entertain them.

We suspect these are questions that you can only ask at certain times in your life or if you have lived a limited one along a restricted highway utilizing one lane.

If you have primarily known success and lived a life that you enjoy and find satisfying, it’s possible that you may never change course or have to ask yourself these questions.

On the other hand, if you are like some of us who did abandon important dreams, settled and lived a life you hated, you fully understand why you should never give up on pursuing your dreams.

Part of the reason is who you become while you are hot in pursuit.

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Have you ever been invited to a dinner party and one of the guests asks you the typical assessment, size you up question of, “So what do you do?”

If you hate your job, at what level of energy do you respond? How much explaining do you have to do to justify why you settled for that crappy 9-5 mess?

What we’ve noticed and have experienced ourselves is that a passionate person on a pathway that they love comes alive in ways they never do in comparison to talking about the life that they settled for.

When they begin to explain to you what life is like in the middle of the pursuit of their future dream, they are animated, intense, passionate and enthralling to listen to.

The listener’s eyes rarely glaze over.

They may privately wonder if the protagonist’s dream is realistic but if they themselves are living a life of quiet desperation through perceived necessity they truly are curious what the other side’s life is like.

They wonder what their life would have evolved into if they had not abandoned theirs.

It is almost like the person they could have become will never exist.

That is a terrifying and depressing thought.

Isn’t there potentially at least two of us in this adult life? The person that we are and sometimes the person that we should have become?

The latter being someone that will never exist if we give up.

For those who settled, to some degree they failed to recognize the powerful words found in Author, Motivational Speaker and Entrepreneur Jim Rohn’s effecting poem aptly named:

The Challenge:

Let others lead small lives……But not you.
Let others argue over small things……..But not you.
Let others cry over small hurts……..But not you.
Let others leave their future in someone else’s hands…….But not you.

A classic example of this portrayal is found in the haunting film and cautionary tale, Mullholland Drive.

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Mulholland Drive is a 2001 neo-noir mystery film written and directed by David Lynch and starring Naomi Watts, Laura Harring, Justin Theroux, Ann Miller, and Robert Forster. It tells the story of an aspiring actress named Betty Elms (Watts), newly arrived in Los Angeles, who meets and befriends an amnesiac woman (Harring) recovering from a car accident. The story follows several other vignettes and characters, including a Hollywood film director (Theroux).

Among other things it is very revealing in terms of who Betty is in the opening scenes of the film while in pursuit of her dream to become a Hollywood starlit and who she eventually devolves into when she voluntarily walks away from the dream while she is standing at the precipice, to help a friend instead.

Director David Lynch is the master at projecting both experiences on screen.

In many of his films that we have watched, we don’t fully understand what is happening before our eyes, but we can intensely feel something which is often very uncomfortable but captivating at the same time.

Mullholland Drive is a film that we literally had to watch three to four times, discuss it while dining at sidewalk cafés and coffee shops clouded with enjoyable pontification.

Most of our analysis eventually proved to be wrong but that’s okay. It was the experience of having that level of conversation humbly well worth it.

Talk about a giving up cautionary tale.

When Betty is pursuing her dream, she is so incredibly vibrant and alive, you can feel her energy burst through the screen and you absolutely love going on this adrenaline filled ride with her. The way she speaks to others, eyes wide open and the sense of urgency in every conversation is inspiring.

And enthralling.

Naïve though she may be, she makes you feel incredibly alive too.

Then when she has the screen test of her life right in her hands and instead of fully taking advantage of it, decides to help a friend who eventually rises to stardom due to Betty’s help and symbolically and unappreciatively spits in her face, like an emotional sledge hammer we feel Betty’s rapid decline.

It is so painful to watch her spiral downwards.

From our viewpoint, abandoning an important dream is not optional if you truly understand the ramifications that unfold after doing so.

The mistake that people often make is when they focus on the destination.

Positive or negative, they tend to forget about who it turns you into along the way when you abandon or pursue.

It is not a neutral decision. It’s not like you will remain emotionally on hold.

You will evolve or devolve. Please always remember that.

One possible comparison is traveling by plane or car to your desired destination.

We have always preferred to travel by car for several reasons but the main one is that you can see how the scenery, people and culture slowly changes as you continue down the highway.

A plane takes you from one place high above the natives below and plops you into another completely different culture and landscape without knowing much of what happened in between.

Yes, it does save you bundles of time but it also robs you of myriads of experiences.

Why is Des Moines, Iowa so different form Portland, Oregon? Travel by car and you will slowly see why.

Why is Salt Lake City, Utah and Las Vegas, Nevada in terms of surrounding isolation so similar?

Once you leave both majestic cities and journey down the surrounding natural vast expanse where there is little civilization and massive salt flats or desert you can feel the connection between two cities whose internal makeup and philosophy couldn’t be further apart.

You can never understand how California slowly changes into Texas unless you travel by car.

Why do you think it is that we’ve heard so many stories of how people inherited large sums of money or won the lottery only later to go broke or not have a good ending?

It’s like they reached their destination by being beamed there with no life learning lessons and unique experiences in between.

Stated another way, they not only reached their destination by plane, they reached it by jet before there could even blink.

Your life is the same way. One day you don’t just plop into your desired future if you successfully accomplish your major goals and become the new you.

It is the journey along the way that changes you and, similar to traveling by car, you will fully understand who you have become as the internal landscape progressively changed along the way.