Hope Is Not A Strategy (Part Four)

Yesterday, we discussed living what you believe. Today, we talk about superheroes and the childhood dreams we may have left behind when we “grew up”.

This could get messy.

So @Sarahrobinson tweets about her son’s super powers. Then my pals @LIPDesign and @DanaReeves get into the conversation, which ultimately leads me to the “distracted” tweet I shared a couple of days ago. The crux of the convo was that Sarah’s kid was using his special abilities, and she, as an adult, didn’t feel as though she had the same skills in her present evolution. I believe the hashtag she used was #themomomentsIfeeillequippedtobehismom.

I think it’s safe to say we’ve all been there as adults. But it’s our own darn fault.

And it’s time things changed.

We walk around so consumed by “worldly” stuff – to borrow a biblical term. Bills, friends’ drama, family drama, our drama…

Drama drama drama! Save it for somebody else’s Momma!

I’m not saying we shouldn’t deal with that “stuff” that pops up in our lives. We definitely should. And we should ask for help when we can’t deal with it ourselves.

What I AM saying is that we use that drama as an excuse. A crutch. We let ourselves get “distracted” from our original dreams.

When we wore Wonder Woman Underoos, and knew we were invincible. When we tied Dad’s bathrobe around our neck and tried to jump off the garage roof. When we dared to believe in the stuff that really mattered: our dreams and the things we wanted to be about in the world.

When we were kids – like Joan of Arc – we were loyal to our dreams, our ambitions and the beliefs we held dear. Even in impoverished communities, little girls still dream of being princesses and living a life of “happily ever after”. Little boys still dream of “making big bucks” or “being a fireman” and “saving the world”.

To be frank, our world could use a little saving right now. Mostly from the so-called “grown ups”

So many of those would-be firefighters, teachers, doctors and princesses traded in their dreams for a 9-5 at the liquor store, not because they couldn’t do it. But because they didn’t see the patterns, and got distracted into a new pattern of “baby daddy momma drama” and wound up flipping burgers, or at the local stop-and-rob.

The simple fact is that for most of us that aren’t living out our happily-ever-after end game, there comes a point when you have to stop blaming everyone but yourself and decide: “Is this really the end game I want for myself?”

Maybe if we showed our daughters that in order to become a princess, they’ve got to have a smaller end game of meeting a prince (it does happen). Maybe if we encouraged our kids to save the world, we’d have a few more like Saint Joan.

And, perhaps along the way, they’d decide that it’s more fun to be president, or write books, or pursue a different dream.

Instead, they’re scrubbing the whole idea of having a dream in the first place.

Scratch that. They’re scrubbing the whole idea of LIVING their dream. They still cling to their dreams like Lola, the showgirl in Barry Manilow’s “Copacabana”: Bitter. Maybe even remorseful. Loaded down with regret and perhaps anger. Sitting there with faded feathers, remembering what could have been.

Is THAT really the end game you want for yourself? Are you still clinging to “hope” as a strategy for getting your happily ever after? Living with a lottery ticket mentality.

My husband says you can’t win if you don’t play the game.

My Mom said the answer’s always no if you don’t ask.

Joan said live what you believe.

I say ask, with hope, backed by a belief in what you’re end game is. That’s where we’ll pick up our super hero mantle again.

And with it, our dreams.