Have your dreams been deferred?
Posted on June 21, 2021 by Stephanie Brown, One of Thousands of Leadership Coaches on Noomii.
Have your dreams been deferred? Why do we tend to forget our dreams? Questions to ask to re-awaken our dreams, dust them off and start living them
Dreams, dreams, dreams! Do you remember your dreams when you wake up in the morning? I typically don’t. But when I was younger I remember being able to recount my dreams in detail the next morning. My children come to me and tell me about vivid dreams that they had the night before all the time. It is actually well documented that the older you get the less you remember your dreams for various reasons like less time spent in deep sleep and as we get older we get less sleep and even gender plays a role with men remembering less than women. But when we talk about dreams we know there are two types of dreams. There are 2 definitions of a dream. The first definition is a series of thoughts, images and sensations occurring in a person’s mind during sleep. And the second definition is a cherished aspiration, ambition or ideal. But, just like the first type of dream, many people tend to forget their cherished aspiration, ambitions and ideals as they get older too. Now, the Harvard scientists have not been able to pinpoint the exact area in the brain that is less active when this happens because I believe this one occurs more in the heart than in the brain. Forgetting our dreams is also a gradual process it occurs over time and under the weight of additional responsibilities and an overstimulating world. One way to become aware if there are dreams you may not be remembering is to ask yourself some simple questions like: When you were 5 years old and you played make believe and your imagination was as wide as the galaxy, what did you create? What was your play world all about? And even as you got a little older, what did you always want to be and do when you grew up? Did you achieve that dream and if so what new dreams have you dreamt since achieving that one. We may or may not be able to control how much we remember of our dreams that occur at night but we have total control over the dreams that come from our heart and our imagination. And we are never too old to dream. Langton Hughes says it this way in his poem. “What happens to a dream deferred”
“What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore-
and then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over-
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?"
It’s time to talk about dreams, dreams we may have forgotten, dreams that may be deferred and dreams that we may not have allowed ourselves to dream yet. Let’s start dreaming again.
