Wednesday, September 30, 2026
I wonder if dreams and the means to see them through aren’t a simultaneous arising. The barriers are often cost. Barriers can be removed, though. If you want to attend graduate school, for example, some schools offer generous financial aid, but those slots are often limited. The barrier then becomes “getting in.”
For others, the barrier might be the amount of time it takes. Barriers come in all shapes!
Everything we desire, especially the “big-ticket” items, seems to be on the other side of hell, through which there is no shortcut. We must climb, endure, and overcome the hurdles, which keep coming, even after you launch into something. For my graduate schooling, it didn’t feel like one day at at time, but one paper at a time, one class at a time, and often, one sleepless night after the next!
Success is a complete adherence to the dream’s see through. In my graduate school instance, I knew in my heart I wanted to be a tenured college professor, so I endured. When I got a job, the tenure process was yet another grueling set of hoops! More hurdles. I endured.
In thinking about my success, and the “insurmountable” dreams I had, it was the love of seeing them “through” that sustained me, no matter what hell came before me. Wondering how I was going to finance it. Wondering how I’d get all my work done. Wondering how I’d ever get tenure and promotion. Wondering how I’d get out of the jams I made. All that wondering “if.”
I wonder if success was mysteriously built into the hell I created. I wonder if love of what I wanted to see “on the other side” sustained me the whole time I wondered “if.”
It’s a wonder anything happens.
I wonder if hell is a myth and love sustains you right through the “thickness” of it.