Someone to chase
It's not too late to dream (it's not, right?)
We’re moving to Washington soon.
But this is not about moving.
(Or maybe it absolutely is about moving?)
The last time we moved - from Oregon to Utah - was almost 19 years ago. This time, we’re trying to downsize, which includes making countless decisions about whether to store, sell, discard, or give away so many different things we’ve collected over the years.
Which brings me to the box under the stairs.
I don’t remember the last time I opened it. Maybe ten years ago, maybe more. I starting adding to it when we moved to Utah in 2005.
What was in it? Hundreds if not thousands of documents, dozens of folders and notebooks, a few old journals. All thrown together in no particular order.
As I opened the large plastic box with the intent to finally clean it out, I groaned. This is going to take forever.
And then it began. As I made my way through the container, quickly choosing to discard the untold number of old general conference talks, college class syllabus, and so many other random documents, a separate pile started to grow in size.
It was a collection of my creative writing over the past 30 years. Screenplays. Short stories. The one and only play I wrote - Free at Last - which I wrote just after graduating from BYU and which was later performed there. Lots of poems. Several of my book manuscripts. Letters of recommendation from various professors and others. It kept growing. Perhaps most interesting were how many different times and in different places I had written down my creative goals, of having screenplays and books produced or published - of becoming a “successful writer.”
But there were also other documents I added to the pile. Things that were never published. Rejection letters from book publishers, colleges I applied to but wasn’t accepted at. The University of Texas. BYU’s creative writing program. The Disney Fellowship. Sundance. Many others.
Lots of “Sorry but you’re not the right fit” or “We found a better candidate” or “This wasn’t quite what we were looking for.”
In a word, rejection.
I wasn’t prepared for the feeling that began to rise inside of me.
It was grief.
But not for all the “no’s” or “try agains.” The grief I felt, and still feel, is from the realization that at some point in the past ten to fifteen years, I’d stopped dreaming. I’d stopped chasing the goal I’d had for so many years to make a living or at the very least, to spend time every day trying to become a maker, an artist, a teller of stories that blessed, inspired, and delighted.
I’d stopped believing in my dreams.
Just over ten years ago, during the 2014 Academy Awards, actor Matthew McConaughey won the award for Best Actor and gave an inspiring acceptance speech which I was reminded of as I stared at the large pile of paper on my basement floor. The movie he won the award for (Dallas Buyers Club, which I haven’t seen, btw) is not what matters here. It’s what McConaughey said near the end of his speech that I want to briefly comment on.
“There are three things that I need each day. One, I need something to look up to, another to look forward to, and another is someone to chase.”
That third one - “someone to chase” - is the knife that cuts deep.
“And to my hero. That's who I chase. When I was 15 years old I had a very important person in my life come and ask me 'Who's your hero?' I said, 'I thought about it and it's me in ten years. So I turned 25 ten years later and that same person comes to me and goes, 'Are you a hero?' I said, 'Not even close!' She said why and I said, 'My hero is me at 35.' You see, every day, and every week, and every month, and every year of my life, my hero is always ten years away. I'm never going to be my hero. I'm not going to obtain that and that's fine with me because it keeps me with somebody to keep on chasing.”
The loss of this person, this “hero” and his dreams, is what I now grieve. I don’t remember making the decision to stop “chasing” him. Yes, life is busy. So many things to care about, to watch over, to tend. We are all in a wrestling match with time and how to “manage” it well. But for so many years, probably beginning over forty years ago when I was still a teenager, I had dreams. Big ones. Impossible ones. Dreams “too good to be true.” To change the world. To be a famous writer, atop best sellers’ lists, to travel the world, to be known and celebrated by millions.
When did I let them - my dreams - go? Why did I let them die?
There is a scene from a favorite movie of mine - Tucker, the Man and His Dream starring Jeff Bridges that I think about sometimes. (Very quick context - Tucker is based on a true story about Preston Tucker, who tried and failed to change the car industry by building a better car. This scene is the moment when one of his supporters reveals a past mistake that could impact Tucker’s fledgling car company.)
The line “Don’t get too close to people. You’ll catch their dreams” just hits, doesn’t it? Dreams. We all have them. The things we imagine doing, the places we imagine going, and biggest of all, the person we dream of becoming.
“I’m a big fan of dreams. Unfortunately, dreams are our first casualty in life - people seem to give them up, quicker than anything, for a ’reality.”
Kevin Costner
So, dear reader, if you’ve made it this far, perhaps you are asking what any of this has to do with developing a closer, stronger relationship with Jesus Christ. Fair question, friend.
Quite a lot, actually. We are all, to paraphrase Matthew McConaughey, “chasing” the Savior. Trying to become more like Him. Trying to love as He loves, teach as He teaches, serve as He served, and bless as He blessed. The fact that we will never, at least in this life, come anywhere close to actually being “even as He is” isn’t the point.
The “chase” is the point.
Making the effort, not giving up, trying again and again, over and over, no matter how hard, no matter how tiring, no matter how discouraged we may feel. For as long as it takes.
I believe this. Or at least, I want to believe it. I desire to believe it.
But behold, if ye will awake and arouse your faculties, even to an experiment upon my words, and exercise a particle of faith, yea, even if ye can no more than desire to believe, let this desire work in you, even until ye believe in a manner that ye can give place for a portion of my words.
Now, we will compare the word unto a seed. Now, if ye give place, that a seed may be planted in your heart, behold, if it be a true seed, or a good seed, if ye do not cast it out by your unbelief, that ye will resist the Spirit of the Lord, behold, it will begin to swell within your breasts; and when you feel these swelling motions, ye will begin to say within yourselves—It must needs be that this is a good seed, or that the word is good, for it beginneth to enlarge my soul; yea, it beginneth to enlighten my understanding, yea, it beginneth to be delicious to me.
Alma 32:27-28
The question I ask is one that perhaps you too have asked or are asking.
Is it too late? Have the opportunities passed me by? Are those dreams I once had, so bright and big and relentless, no longer potent?
I hope not. I want to believe they can still be reached. At the very least, I want to feel again what I once felt. The thrill of the chase. The striving, the falling short, the drive to keep wanting and wishing and hoping. Most important, the will to do the work required. To pay the price. I’ve at least learned this much - there is no dream without doing.
“God is eagerly waiting for the chance to answer your prayers and fulfill your dreams, just as he always has. But he can't if you don't pray, and he can't if you don't dream. In short, he can't if you don't believe.”
Here’s to your dreams, and to mine.
It’s time to begin chasing them again.
Moving your mountains may require a miracle. Learn about miracles. Miracles come according to your faith in the Lord. Central to that faith is trusting His will and timetable—how and when He will bless you with the miraculous help you desire. Only your unbelief will keep God from blessing you with miracles to move the mountains in your life.
Scott: I read all of your posts. Each is a treasure.
I didn't respond to this post at first, because I wasn't sure what to say. You touched a nerve in me.
"Hold fast to dreams / for if dreams die / life is a broken-winged bird / that cannot fly"
We get old and pragmatic, and we become accustomed to living with something different than we had hoped. To some extent, perhaps there is divine wisdom in this. Dreaming dreams is easy, but pursuing dreams is hard; in the alchemy of life, this invites us to ponder. Perhaps not all dreams are equally valuable. Perhaps not all are worth pursuing, in exactly the form that we conceive them.
Nonetheless, the dreams that stay in our hearts the longest, and move us the most, are there for a reason. I think they say the most about our true natures. There is a passage at the end of _The Last Battle_ where Emeth, a young soldier who had aspirations to do glorious deeds in the name of his god, Tash, finally meets Aslan. He is consumed with awe and love, but he is concerned that his former dreams will be offensive to Aslan. Aslan reassures him about the value of his dreams: "Beloved, said the Glorious One, unless thy desire had been for me, thou wouldst not have sought so long and so truly. For all find what they truly seek."
I think it is not just writing in general, but writing of a particular type, or about a particular Person, for a particular audience, that is really at the core of your dream. And I think you will find What you seek. Never give up on that dream!
In the meantime, I am at least one example of the people who you are blessing as you share your journey. :-)
One other thing I wanted to say: perhaps the gift of dreams (the gift of dreams that comes from the Spirit, I mean) is not limited simply to things that happen during REM sleep. And perhaps finding your box was a way for the Spirit to strengthen that gift in you...