I have a card on my mantle that an excellent friend of mine gave me. It contains this quote:

I was thinking back to who I wanted to be when I was young. I had a cowboy outfit, but I pretended that I was a horse a lot. I may have been a bit confused as to what states of being I would be able to achieve when I was a child. I’m sure my parents are breathing a collective sigh of relief that I didn’t actually pursue the dream of becoming a horse… I don’t think they would have been able to support that kind of alternate identity in their oldest daughter.

I haven’t always known who I wanted to be. There was a time when I knew what I did not want more clearly than I knew what I wanted. I have muddled forward in the in-between land, somewhere equidistant from the dreams of being a dolphin trainer, or a veterinarian, or a missionary and where I am now, a freelance editor who is publishing a novel this summer.

The vision I had of my future self has changed so many times over the years, sometimes as a choice made freely and gladly, and other times as a result of doors closing or more jarring and painful circumstances. Each time I lay down an old dream in search of a new one I suffer loss and the opportunities that I’m choosing to leave behind. But I also experience great joy at the possibilities that lay before me.

If you choose to let your dreams go, or if you have to for some reason or another, new dreams are a happy discovery. Because you can’t ever stop… dreaming that is. At your lowest point, or at your highest, there’s always some state of being that we long for. Whether it’s comfort and security or quiet solitude and an escape from pressure and expectation, we all want something, want to be something.

One important way that my vision of my future self has evolved… instead of thinking about who I will be “someday” I focus more on who I am now? My lovely therapist wrote a blog post in which she posed the weighty question, “Why not now?” If there is something I want to do, if there is someone I want to be, why not be that person now? Why do I need to wait for someone’s permission or for a specific amount of time to pass or…? What’s stopping me from being who I want to be right now?

Sometimes the thing stopping me is the identity/dream/goal I haven’t let go of yet. Sometimes, in order to achieve the thing you really want (or to discover what that is at all) you have to let go of what you never thought you’d ever lose.

I wanted to be a horse (be a horse, have a horse, same thing, right?) when I was a child. I’ve always loved horses… so when I found the opportunity to ride and a generous soul who was willing to let me work for time on horseback, I dove in with open arms to receive that manifestation of my dreams. For a while, riding horses consumed my life and I was ever so happy.

And then, gradually, I started to fall out of enchantment with horses. There were other things (like writing and my editing business) I wanted to spend my moments on, and continuing to prop up an old identity was starting to chafe. I realized that the dream wasn’t for me, but it was painfully difficult to let go of an identity that I’d cherished for so long, since I was a child. I had friends and daily rhythms tied up in the idea that I was a horse-person, and I hated to lose them.

When I finally let go of the old dream to make space for new ones, I didn’t lose my friends. I didn’t lose my sense of self, either. Instead, by pruning what wasn’t working for me anymore, I grew. But it was scary. And painful. And I had to say goodbye to part of me, and grieve the loss. Still, it was only through putting aside a dream that no longer fit anymore, that I had grown out of, that I was able to embrace something new and become more me than I had been before.

So what about you? Who do you want to be now? What about tomorrow? What about five years from now? Not sure? Let’s find out together!