Sarah UpdikeI came across this Instagram post today where the creator, Peaches, was going through things she wrote as a kid and she shared a writing about her dream outfit: “a polka-dotted tie and pants with birds and flies”. She looks at the camera and says, “Okay, 80s Peaches–you want a polka-dotted tie and pants with birds and flies…?” Her adult self then decorates a pair of jeans with birds and flies (because “the heart wants what the heart wants”) and then crafts a polka dotted tie. In the final shot, she’s wearing her younger self’s dream outfit and says, “I got you, Peaches.” Watching her proudly stand there in the wacky dream outfit of her younger self got me thinking…
I’ll bet that most of us, when we were kids, had a “dream something” that was so absurd that we either knew we shouldn’t ask for it or we did ask for it and were denied. I’m guessing that if we didn’t ask, it’s because we already knew the limits of where the adults in our life were willing to go; if we did ask and were denied, we learned that there were limits.
And then we grew up and we went into the world–into our careers and lives where we’re told to dream big, to put ourselves out there, to JUST GO FOR IT, no matter what. While I know there are some people who did just that, I’m more familiar with people like myself who have done really good work but also feel like we’re holding back, even when we really WANT to go for that big dream. Something about our grown-up dream seems like pants with birds and flies: too absurd, too weird, too unreal to go for. We’ve internalized the message that some things are just too much to ask for. And that we might as well forget we ever dreamed it because people around us will tell us some version of “no”. So we choose not to go.
We don’t go because we forget (or never knew) that, as adults, we don’t have to ask anymore. We can just do it. Adult Peaches has the know-how and the agency to make Kid Peaches bird/fly pants and a polka-dotted tie. So I’m trying an experiment and a making one of my kid dreams happen to see if saying “I got you, Little Sarah” gives me permission to step more boldly into my grown-up dreams.
My denied kid dream was playing piano. So I’ve ordered a keyboard and I’m going to learn to play. My inner critic is beside herself with embarrassment and has double-checked to make sure there’s a headphone jack so no one can hear me mess up. But Kid Sarah–she is SO EXCITED she can hardly stand it. Like…Christmas morning excited. Eagerly checking the porch every day to see if they keyboard is here, even though it doesn’t ship until 10 days from now. I might be terrible on the piano, but I am going to be a rock star at making my kid self’s dreams happen. Admittedly, learning piano isn’t as cool as pants with birds and flies with a polka-dotted tie, but I had to start somewhere.
What’s your delayed kid dream and what might be possible if you made it happen?
