When You Wish Upon a Star...

…then watch it crash and burn in a fiery inferno.

“If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.” — 16th Century Nursery Rhyme

Remember when you had a major crush on that boy in school? Your thoughts were always being hijacked by his tousled wavy hair, cute smile, and intense gaze.

You spent hours creating an imaginary life for your future, carefully crafting the details of how it would come to pass. You tried to get close to him in hopes that he would get around to falling all over you already! You were sure it was going to happen, so what was the holdup?

Then the next thing you knew, he was going out with Cindy Lou Who, or whatever her name was.

Dream crushed.

Then there was that piece you spent days writing, pouring your heart and soul into, knowing in your gut it had the ingredients to go viral and make a million dollars.

But it didn’t.

It sat in the corner of the internet collecting cobwebs, and while “5 Tricks A Chipmunk Can Learn” gained 2 million views, it lay curled up on the floor, plucking petals off a daisy and muttering, “They love me, they love me not.”

Oh wait, that was me…

You get the point. We have multiple dreams throughout our lives. Some are short-lived and some stay with us for years. They’re born out of things we see, or do, or hear, and once they’ve worked their way into our minds, they’re hard to shake loose.

The power of dreams

Dreams are mysterious things. They have incredible influence in our lives regardless of whether they have any basis in reality or not. They give us hope and the will to keep trudging along, dangling the carrot of “what if” in front of our noses.

Dreams are not goals. Goals are specific and usually involve some sort of plan designed to reach a destination. Dreams are vague and are not limited to the realm of attainability. Some dreams can be achieved by using goals if you can manage to tie them down and pinpoint exactly what it is that you want. That’s hard to do though, because dreams like to float freely and unchained, wandering wherever they want.

So when a dream pops, it does a number on our emotions and we are left floundering in our headspace, desperately clawing for something to give us purpose and to justify all the time spent with our head in the clouds.

Enter the supernovae

Did you know that some stars explode when they die, showering bits and pieces of themselves out into the universe? They’re known as Type I supernovae.

A Type II Supernova goes out in a blaze of glory. It grows brighter and brighter, till the combination of gasses causes the star to explode in a light a million times brighter than it was.

The left-over pieces of these stars that are hurled into space are sometimes drawn into young stars, becoming part of a new creation.

So when a precious dream implodes before your eyes, picture it as a supernova that, with its last burst of energy, launched its fragments into the future to birth an even greater dream. And with some work and a plan, you might be able to turn that dream into a goal, and then a reality.

“Keep your eyes on the stars, and your feet on the ground.” — Theodore Roosevelt