I just finished my last interview for this book I’ve been writing about dreams.
Since July I’ve been interviewing people from around the world (mostly via phone, some Skype, and some in person) about a dream they achieved. When I started, I had no idea what I would find.
And at the end, I can honestly say I found more than I could have ever dreamed.
I’m blown away by what a gift it was for 120 people to give me 30 minutes of their time to talk about some of the most important moments in their life. I was most encouraged that every one of the 120 people I talked to had dealt with failure or rejection on the way to their dream. Apparently it’s required. And remembering that over these past 11 months has made me feel infinitely better when I’m in the thick of those things, has given me the courage to go on even when I felt terrible, in those moments where I stopped believing in my dream.
I also thought it was pretty poignant that the overall theme of the last phone interview was about trying. I talked to this incredibly positive woman who believed in listening to her “butterflies and rainbows“ kid-self and just trying things to see what might happen. She of course has had dreams that didn’t work out, some that still elude her. But she doesn’t focus on those. And she doesn’t let those keep her from trying. She seemed to get a particular joy from the trying itself.
And that is what is sitting with me right now as I close up this phase of the book and move on to the next phase - I tried. I’m a dreamer, a big, big dreamer. And yet I don’t know if any of my big dreams will come true. You cannot know. But I can try. And I know as I finished this 120th that I tried so hard. And not only did I try, but I actually did something. I created these 120 interviews that I’m now having transcribed and am then going to read through and develop insights that will turn into a book that I hope will help someone else go for and achieve a dream.
And I feel close. I still have so much work to do for this book. So.Much. But man it feels so good to have hit some kind of milestone. To be able to definitively say that no matter what happens from this point on, I did this. I tried. I did it. On some level I dreamed of doing all of these interviews. And around the halfway point I wondered what in the world I was doing.
But here I am. I did it. I can honestly say it’s been one of the best things I’ve ever done, but that the uncertainty of this whole project has also made it one of the hardest. Because this was the first time I took a huge risk. The first time I really invested in myself, without any certainty of an end result. There is still no certainty of course. But with these 120 interviews I feel like I have something else.
A sense of my own agency.
That’s what started this book all along. And now I can confidently say that I know we have agency. I know that even in this messed up crazy tragic world that our actions do matter. That we can move things, change things. We can’t control everything, that’s for sure. But that doesn’t mean our actions don’t create ripples, that we cannot create things that wouldn’t exist if we hadn’t tried. That is the butterfly-and-rainbow magic I have taken from this whole process thus far.
I’ll leave you with a quote from my last interview a few minutes ago:
"Wouldn't it be better to give hope a shot?"
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