I have big dreams. Bigger than my heart can hold. A deep and undeniable presence within me, my dreams weigh heavily and unbalanced. They morph. They scream with passion though I must be extremely careful for they have the tendency to scamper away at the mere peep of dissension. The faintest whispers of such outside voices are enough to do the deed. Voices that do not hesitate to remind me of my limitations. My humanness. They yank me down from cloud nine to planet earth, sometimes crushing me to the ground, slamming my face into the dirt. The pain is too much for me to bear at times, forcing me to shamefully reenter the puny box that I had shaped for myself. It's a home that I'd started building for myself ever since my first encounter with criticism. Brutal, unadulterated yet truthful criticism. I remember how badly it hurt. The lasting pain. A sting about which one desperately tries to forget without success. The exposure. The naked truth. A pair of eyes, though terrifyingly not my own, had shone light upon my capabilities, which were no more than scanty. My already overflowing bin of shortcomings being brought under the spotlight. Labeling, defining, measuring me. And what absolutely crushed me to the bone was the fact that I had no control over these thoughts, perceptions, and truth claims made about me. And so I learnt to hide. I am the tip of the iceberg concealing most of who I am, carefully revealing only an amount that I have decided through calculation that I can control. Withholding and disclosing at my own discretion. However during this process, I had begun burying my dreams, muffling the once loud and clear sound of my heart's deepest longings. Fortunately for myself, however, my dreams are and remain wild and untamed. They run freely and continue to grow without my mind's consent. And for that I am thankful.
I used to feel stupid. Embarrassed to have dreams of such immensity, but that guilt is slowly diminishing as I reflect more and more upon just how I've come to be such a dreamer. And that reason is undoubtedly my parents. They have taught me how to dream, and I mean really dream. I suppose all children of immigrants, to some degree, share this same sentiment. I wonder what was running through their minds at the airport in Korea, each with one carry-on in hand, a couple thousand dollars, and of course, a one-way ticket to the United States. My father had recently arrived back home after having worked in Saudi Arabia, leaving my mom husbandless for a year. I cannot begin to fathom the considerations and compromises which led to this ultimate decision. Were their families supportive? Who initiated the conversation, my mother or my father, about possibly emigrating to a place they've only read and heard about? What I would do to go back in time. To have been a fly on the wall during this life-shaping part of their marriage... After 24 years of living in America, I can only imagine the emotions and memories that now overwhelm them in their times of retrospection.
Being home after graduating from college is rather difficult. On the bright side, though, I can't imagine myself being anywhere other than in Albany to process the past twenty one and a half years of my life. This is namely because I have the two most helpful resources to guide me in a time of mental and emotional turmoil, assuring me that all the chaos that exists inside my head is absolutely natural. That I have no reason to fear what my future may hold simply because of the good and perfect nature of the One who holds my future. That dreaming big, in the right context, is healthy and necessary. That my dreams, too, hold both weight and meaning.
