Following the significant loss in my life this summer, I’ve had a lot of time to think. Spending fourteen months in love with someone, it is natural to make plans together, whether it involves your respective careers, where to relocate or how many children you will have and what their names will be. You learn that to really make things work, there are compromises that need to be made, often at the expense of the hopes and dreams you had prior to falling in love with this person. You later learn to ask yourself, should you really be compromising your dreams at all (the realistic ones at least)?
Pliny the Elder once said, “…the only certainty is that nothing is certain.” Nearly all of us find out at some point in life that this applies to relationships. Things are never certain, so planning our lives based on current circumstances is a risk we sometimes take. Then these circumstances change. You always hear people talk about “the secret to life.” Well I am gradually finding out that there are many secrets that life holds, and learning how to come away from a loss and regain your life is just one of those secrets.
Endless hours have been spent re-evaluating how I plan to spend the rest of my life. In the process, I have rediscovered one of my life’s greatest dreams, a dream which I was willing (maybe too willing) to compromise in my recent relationship. For years, I have wanted to live in Seattle when I get older, preferably fresh out of college. I have always loved Seattle. Something about that city just gets my heart beating fast. No matter what I’m doing, a single thought of Seattle draws me into a daydream that lasts for what seems like hours. During my freshman year at Oregon, my friend Peter and I had discussed moving to the Emerald City after school, though not completely seriously at the time. Then, over the course of the next two or three years, things happened in my life. School went poorly, to say the least. A good friend died. My car constantly crapped out on me. Don’t miss that at all. Seattle slowly became the last thing on my mind. And then I met a girl. Seattle might as well have ceased to exist in my mind.
The fourteen months spent with her were amazing. No regrets to be had. Over the course of the relationship, plans were made. She wanted to live in Boston at some point, I wanted to live in Seattle at some point, and we were both willing to compromise. A few years here, a few years there, it’d be great. However, now that it’s all over with, I have been fortunate enough to rediscover my passion for Seattle. I still think it’d be cool to live in Boston, but Seattle just has so much draw for me. I realized that I was asinine to turn my “living there indefinitely” dream into a “maybe a couple years or so” compromise. Yes, relationships require compromises such as this, but when it requires sacrificing a lifelong dream, maybe it’s not the right time for that level of relationship. Maybe one should live out their dreams to the fullest extent before making that kind of sacrifice, or find someone who wants to live out the dream with them. Granted, I could always move to Seattle and completely hate it, but that’s beside the point, and highly doubtful.
Seattle is what I want out of life, if nothing else. I want to work in one of the buildings that grace the stunning skyline. I want to have a Starbucks available to me wherever I turn. I want season tickets to the Mariners. I want to take an occasional cruise around the Sound and the lakes on an Argosy ferry. I want to have an annual pass to the Space Needle so I could go up every night after work if I so choose. I want to be able to get fresh fish from Pike’s and take it home to my Sound-view condo (hopefully someday) and cook it up while looking out the window at the sun setting over the water. I want Seattle.
In writing this, I have discovered yet another secret to life. We all have dreams for our lives, realistic and not-so-much. Once we figure out the realistic, and even more importantly, the ones that drive us, we should pursue them with all of the ardor we can muster up. If someone asks us to sacrifice those dreams or compromise them in any way, maybe it’s not the right time to have that person in our life, or maybe they’re just not the right person for us. That’s not to say relationships of any kind should be avoided, just that they shouldn’t stand in the way of what means the most to us in life. You wouldn’t want someone to allow you to sacrifice your spiritual beliefs or your morals, why let them allow your dreams to be forgotten?
