"Follow Your Dreams..."

The children watched "Tangled" for the first time this week.  It is based on the story of Rapunzel, but lengthened and complicated so that it lasts for the requisite hour and a half.

Mostly, I like the movie. The main character, Rapunzel, is a sweet girl.  Her parents (who lost her when she was kidnapped as an infant) never give up hoping for her return.  Her dashing "prince" is in reality a thief, but he mends his ways and sacrifices himself for Rapunzel's best interests.  And unlike many a modern movie, she and he get married in the end.

One main focus on the movie has me a little concerned, and that is the theme of "following your dreams".  HOW many times have we heard that in movies and popular culture and from the podiums at graduation ceremonies?

"Follow your dreams!"
"You can be anything you want to be!"
"You can do anything you want to do!"
"Aim for the stars!"

  My short response to those phrases is, "Hogwash."

As one of my pastor friends points out, none of us can really be anything we want to be.  None of us can, for example, be the Queen of England.  There is a queen of England, and when she dies the next person to be queen is already lined up for that honor.

Very few of us also have the physical capability of being professional athletes, either. I remember as an 8th grader looking askance at a fellow student who said when he grew up that he was going to be a professional football player. He was a small guy and it seemed very unlikely that he would be able to be a pro.

  Now, there are positive aspects to the "live your dreams" idea.  One is that it enlarges our minds to possibilities.  We do live in an amazing culture where we have MANY options.  In most cultures in the past, the job of a person was largely dictated by his ancestry or caste.  If you were born a serf, you didn't have much chance of doing something else.  If your father was a farmer, you were almost stuck being a farmer.  If you wanted to be an important politician, you'd better have a powerful, aristocratic family at your back.

  We live in an era where the most powerful man in our country (and arguably, the world) can be a man with dark skin and whose father was from Kenya.  I am not a supporter of our current president, but I am very glad that a non-Caucasian can be president. That is entirely right, that a person is not limited by his looks or his family background.

  So given that, what is the harm of the message to young people that they should "live their dreams"?

There are a couple of concerns I have.

One is that it may give young people an inaccurate view of the way the world works.  A lot of work in this world is just hard.  It is tiring, it is boring, it is not exciting.  I think many young people don't really understand this, and struggle in entry level jobs because it isn't "fun" or "their dream job."   The world doesn't hand things to us on silver platters, including dream jobs.  We may never attain our dream job. We may have to work 30 years to get our dream job.  The more young people accept that life is hard sometimes, the better they can handle the disappointments.  Of course, we don't want them to be confirmed pessimists either.  We want them to be realists -- not always assuming the worst, but also not assuming everything will work out beautifully in this world.

A bigger concern I have is that sometimes "following a dream" results in a person abandoning his or her responsibilities to other people.  This one really scares me.  The idea that life should be happy and fulfilling for a person all the time has led to some people abandoning spouses and aging parents or even dependent children in pursuit of "their dream" or their desire to be "happy". 

I remember what was to me a shocking conversation with a fellow graduate student back in my single days.  She was married and the mother of a young daughter, but spent little time with her child because her graduate student work was so demanding. She stated calmly, "I love my daughter, but I would never let her get in the way of my career."

I wasn't married, as I said, and I didn't have children yet but even back then I was grieved by that response.  Part of being a parent is setting aside your desires and yes, dreams, for the sake of your children.  I am not saying that a parent shouldn't go to college, but the children must be high high high on the priority list.  There are a number of things I would rather like to do (not dreams, but desires) that I've set aside because my family takes so much time.  And I don't regret that.  I can lay aside my desire to learn to play the piano for this season, and maybe when I'm older I can learn. Or maybe I'll learn in Heaven and not before.  If there are pianos in Heaven, that is.

Which brings me to my last point, and that is of course, GOD.

I don't think we should follow our dreams.  I think we should follow God's dreams for us.  Now, those may well be the same thing.  I think usually God gifts us with abilities that dovetail nicely with His plans for us.  I can't imagine God ever directing me to be a worship dancer.  That is just SO not me, and I don't have a dancing bone in my body.  He HAS gifted me with academic excellence, which makes it (relatively) easy for me to teach my children.  He has gifted me with organizational abilities so our family of 9 doesn't succumb completely to entropy. 

If you are a follower of Jesus, you should be asking God to guide your dreams.  Sometimes He will shock you with what He plans. Sometimes His dreams are so much more than you can imagine. Sometimes, He will allow life circumstances to break your heart. That is painful, but it is reality.  Jesus, Who died on the cross for us, deserves our commitment to His cause, not our own.

Follow God's dreams...