Dreams on Hold
written last January 2023
I wonder when that moment comes. You know, “that” moment. That moment when you won’t mind the world around you keeps moving — with someone screaming at the phone on one side of the room, while on the opposite side of the building, deadlines are being thrown from one moment to the next. The busyness of the world makes its own noise, while your world remains eerily silent; the only noise coming from the keyboard as I type my thoughts away. The night is still, the house is quiet. The moon is nowhere to be seen, and I am alone with my thoughts with the screen glaring in front of me. I wonder when I’ll say I’m content despite knowing my dreams are yet to be reached because I have someone to look forward them with.
That moment.
It’s the one when you see the man look at the girl, with all the love in her eyes. It is the one when I ridicule how Rachel chose to give up her dream to work in Paris just to be with a man she had once fallen in love with. It is the type of decision that makes me question, “You’re willing to give that up for love?”
It’s the times I hear the stories of a couple, of someone choosing to forgo that job offer “because I love her.” It’s the books I read with an eye arched up in bewilderment and looking with ridicule, of stories of people with long talks before staying in their towns “because I have him.”
I have seen those who put their dreams on hold, to put their goals on the side just to spend that time with their special someone. I’ll never understand those couples, those who can oh-so-willingly settle. There might be a day I will understand and make that same decision, but that day is far from the present.
But, if you can spend the rest of your life with whom you can hold your hand in peace, who you look forward to in life without looking back in regret, who you can read books with in silence while you silently hold each other’s hand, then it’s a love worth staying for. It’s the kind of love you’d give up that plane ride for. It’s the kind of love you’d be willing to put everything on hold, because with them, everything feels right.
I wonder if there’ll be someone who I can willingly put my dreams on hold for, because in that moment, I know I have everything I need.
