Deferred Dreams

While I am strong supporter of the idea that many of our dreams are better left unfulfilled (look at the statistics for lottery winners), I also often lament the dreams of mine that have not materialized.  Any time I start thinking in this direction, Langston Hughes' poem "A Dream Deferred" comes to mind.  I think about the dreams I have lost that I regret, that have festered, that I have forgotten, and that still hold a happy memory for me.

I have few regrets as I am happy with my life and I know that changing even a small piece of my past could have seriously changed my life's course.  Still, there are forks in road of my life where, with everything else being equal, I would have liked to follow the other path. 

The greatest of these is following the path of being a full-time writer.  If anything, this summer (and many of those that came before) has shown that I need to work on my self-discipline if I want this to be more than a dream.  Still, I look with longing at people's "writing spaces" and dens.

As I have aged and my children have grown, I find that some of my dreams for them are not to be realized.  That may be for the best.  Many of my dreams for my children are dreams based on my ideas of happiness, which may or may not be their own.

I have few regrets, but I still have dreams that I would prefer if they were not deferred.