A family Christmas gift – the entire set of Harry Potter DVDs – hours of first class story telling so prepare for what could be a few Potter inspired blogs!
I was engrossed in the film when out of the screen leapt one of Dumbledore’s (or should we attribute the real author and say J K Rowling’s?!) magical quotes filled with wisdom:
“It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live.”
But, we cry, we must have dreams! Yes we must – and if you don’t have any this year is your year to dream! But those dreams can become mesmerising and all demanding. They can continually pull our thoughts and energies into a time that is yet to come…or may never come. Meanwhile the gifts that today, the present, bring are missed: moments of joy go unexperienced, creations of beauty go unseen, pleasurable sensations go untasted and priceless opportunities are missed.
This resonates for me as 2018 has been the year in which Mindfulness has become an almost (am still working on it!) integrated part of my functioning. With that has come a growing awareness of how much time I spend mentally tripping over my own feet in a race to catch up with my thoughts that are minutes, hours, days, weeks and sometimes years ahead of my actual body. I can only exist physically in the present moment but my mind engages in endless time travel. With that comes anxiety, stress and regret as I continually realise too late that I have missed some precious moment that I can never recapture.
It is a balance we need, as is so often the case. We need dreams – as to dream is to take the first step towards making life fulfilling. If you have no dreams then don’t be surprised if life disappoints you! But we must balance the dreaming with the living – experience the moments of joy, notice the beauty around, taste the pleasures that arouse all your senses and seize the priceless opportunities that are around every bend in the road. Let us be waking dreamers, fully engaged in experiencing every moment of the lives we already have, but daring to dream of futures that hold even greater wonder.
