Happily Ever After

Having a dream is one of the greatest motivators that one can ever have. That goal in life that keeps you desiring to wake up the next day to chase it. A dream can cause you to endure the worst of experiences in life and brave the greatest of adversities in its pursuit. People who have a dream are generally focused in life. One would give up many things and some can even give up everything to pursue a dream.

            Sleepless nights of planning and strategizing often precede the realisation of a dream. When you have a dream it occupies all quotas of your life. It is the greatest tenant of the mental faculties and the most important drive of your passion.

            It follows then that when we are young we are encouraged to dream. No dream is too big, we are told. Dream big. So we dream. We dream of being engineers, doctors, lawyers, surgeons, neurosurgeons, pilots. The list can go on and on and on. We dream of owning big and beautiful homes, marrying the best spouse and raising the most disciplined children on the planet. I mean, sometimes we even dream of marrying someone out of this world and raising kids in a different planet away from the corruption of planet earth.

            If you are wondering where I am headed and trying to marry this introduction with the title, let me help you out. I have a question for you that will mark the shift of this discussion. If you may, call it a series of questions. To begin with, what happens when you are living your dream?

            That’s right. We all appreciate the bliss of dreaming big. Doesn’t it sound great when you relate your dream to the anxious ears of friends and family and you see the sparkle in their eyes as they begin to grasp the vast scope of your imagination? Of course it does. However, if you are fortunate enough, you actually get to live your dream.

            Living your dream can wax a conglomeration of emotions. There is the ecstasy of making of, the thrill of success, they joy of arrival, the merry of completion, the pride of the conquest, the disbelief of victory among others. In that moment when you sign the marriage certificate and the crowd cheers you on as you stand facing the most perfect soul alive about to receive your first (public) kiss, the fears and worries of the world seem to fly away.

            As you close your eyes and feel the lips of your lifetime partner so tender and alive, the world around you fades out into oblivion and you enter into your own world with only three words on every street, “happily ever after.” It is the utmost bliss.

            As you stand at the hostel door of your coveted university with your suitcases at your feet and you breath in the air of academic conquest, the sleepless nights of high school are forgotten having all paid off. It was worth it. Those few minutes of absorbing the fact that you made it into your dream university and that your career path is finally aligned can be overwhelming. The euphoria of the moment makes you oblivious of the anxiety of your parents as they hand you over to the world.

            Looking up into the skies filled with graduation caps from your colleagues who toiled the rigours of campus life with you as you finally graduate fills the heart with merry. The caps almost look like fireworks in the sky as the bliss settles into your soul. You made it!

            We have all had a glorious moment of celebrating achievements in our lives however big or small they were. There was that moment when you finally beat your academic rival in primary school, the moment you graduated at any level of school, the moment you learned to ride a bicycle, that day you received your driver’s license, got married, held your firstborn child in your arms, got your first job, got promoted at work, the day he finally proposed, that day she said yes, name it.

            Following the achievement, you definitely expected to live happily ever after, but are you? Well, life is complicated. You dreamt it for years. It was the thing that motivated you to wake up each day for months or years but when you finally achieved it, what happened then?

We all come to that moment when we realise that our dream wasn’t that big after all. Which brings me to yet another question. Is it possible that the joy comes not from actually living the dream but from the hope of realising the dream? Is it possible that what really we need in life is a dream; not its realisation? How come we are fuller of life when dreaming than when living the dream? I mean, now that you have your driver’s license or graduation certificate, are you still as excited as you were the day you went to collect it?

As you watch any romantic movie, soap opera or read a book on the theme of the triumph of love, you always long for that line that reads, “And they lived happily ever after.” Let us take a few minutes here and dissect that “happily ever after.” Is it ever, really happily ever after? If it is, how come it only happens in the movies? Lets’ drive it further. If indeed it even happened in the movies, how come there has never been a release that showed us how they were living happily ever after? Am just asking.

So did I take my time to write this just to burst the bubble of those who dream of a happily ever after? Not at all. I merely wrote to propose one thing. You cannot have one dream in life because the moment you realise your dream, your life loses its purpose. Human beings were created, among other reasons, to dream. Without a dream life has no meaning and that includes the period after realising your dream. Once you achieve what you have always dreamt of, you no longer have a dream and without a dream, you have no purpose. Not in this world.

If you always dreamt of getting married, contrary to what you may have come to believe, your life loses meaning on your wedding day. If you only dreamt of having kids, the day your lastborn comes to this earth will be the last of your meaningful days. Each person needs a dream bigger than what they can realise in their lifetime. You need to dream again after realising your dream. One of the most sombre things I ever heard in the university was this statement, “I studied to come to the university: I did not come to the university to study.” When you hear such a statement you don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

There are however many unspoken variants of that statement in various spheres of life. One would say, “He used to be romantic before the wedding.” Well, he was romantic to get a wife: he did not get a wife to be romantic! Interpolate if you are a man.

Are you living with someone who has lost that sparkle that attracted you to them? Maybe they just lost their dream (either by realising it or coming to the conclusion that they can’t.) The only thing you can do to enjoy life with such a person again is to help them dream again. Inspire a dream in them that is bigger than their lifespan.

Are you that person who used to talk big as you pursued your dream and now you find yourself sulking as if life has no meaning? Probably you are wondering what happened. It is not always calamity that causes people with big dreams to sulk.