Later

This is not mine. I
will put mine here
when I take it off of
my rear view mirror.

School is over and my blogging hiatus has ended. So, first of all, hello again.

I thought it would be fitting to come back with a story for anyone who once gave up on something valuable for reasons that seemed smart at the time, but unwise ten years later, and just regrettable after that. 

Before I had children, I lived in a quaint apartment with kind-of an ocean-view and I drove a sports car. I had a lot of stuff. And then I met my husband and I had things that were better than stuff. I didn’t have a college degree, but you know, I'd do it later if it still mattered.

It mattered seven years later when I realized how much difficulty I’d have if I had to go back to work and how much less I’d make without a degree, and, in a mind-storm of clarity, I started classes at UNH.

By then, however, more important priorities had been born and were scrambling about, needing juice and snacks and naps and help with shoelaces. Pulled from them, I became unhappy and left school after the semester ended. It was okay, I’d do it later when they were all in school all day.

Later, I did try again, and withdrew again over similar conflicts, but now with less faith in later, because later had arrived as expected, and I had been as ready as I could be, which was not ready at all.

Later never looks like you think it will – with you in the center as you were, but now surrounded by taller people who can feed themselves. Or you as you were, but with more time, and patience, greater maturity and a sense of discipline. No. Later is more likely to be you with an old unmet goal, and possibly less drive, and maybe less memory of how it felt when all you needed to do anything was to want to.

Later for many of us is making peace with not doing what you thought you would do, pointedly making it less important in your vision of the future, and finally taking it off the big To Do list altogether.

But, damn, I said when I drove past UNH years after that.

Damn.  

Goals and dreams are different. Goals can be annoying and demanding while you fight with “should” and “maybe,” until you finally surrender to guilt, or the fear of failure, or conversely, hang on to that later-in-life burst of desire to improve yourself and be happier while you still can. But goals can expire in the transitioning to a new life stage, and they are no match for excuses. When the excuses win, there is not “I’ll do it later,” but “Maybe I can’t.”

They die, goals.

Dreams are different. Dreams don’t demand, they don’t make you feel guilty if you don’t honor them. They don’t make you irritated with yourself. They just leave it up to you. Dreams sometimes do not even introduce themselves until they can be fit into where you are in life. Sometimes they bear a faint resemblance to those dead goals, you know, the goal-ghosts.

One morning, a little over a year ago, ten years after my last withdrawal from UNH, I went to their page. Then I went to the Psychology page, and the commencement page after that. I began to think about it. I tried to imagine it. A stage to cross, a cap with a tassel, a gown. The faces of my husband and children in the audience. I practiced saying it, “I got my degree in Psychology.”

I dreamed.

My dream and I went back to school for the last time on August 24, 2018. And damn, it was hard. It was discouraging. I had to learn how to do homework again and I felt old. But I felt something else which was strong, and with each passing week, I felt stronger still. There were other feelings that happened, which are called growth.

Finally, finally, last Thursday, with my children, my husband, and my mother looking on, I crossed that stage, and graduated magna cum laude with a B.A. in Psychology.

See? Here I am! (@ 50:40, give or take).  Please feel free to view this if you are considering a stage of your own to cross. I look at it every day. Several times, usually. It's fun to be under your own badass self.

Here is the point. 

Dreams that don’t seem to happen on time can be easily confused with unmet goals. 

But dreams, however elusive, or shapeless, or senseless as they may seem, exist to make you understand that your better life still waits. Just when you don’t think you can do it, or worse, already had your chance, dreams introduce themselves and say, “try it now.” 

And dreams are free. They are free because while you work your way toward them, even if they still too far away to seize, they remain – possible. They are more than a thing we hope for. Dreams keep us alive.

Good luck with yours.