I remember as a child when we made tiny dioramas in school. Inside of tiny boxes, or eggshells, or jars, we created little worlds filled with grass, and a painted sky and teeny trees and animals. Mine was an egg, with a itty bitty pond, and some moss for grass, and a lavender sky and a teeny little duck, perhaps with a teensy rabbit friend sitting by the pond. Sometimes that image of that tiny perfect world pops into my head and into my dreams at night. It has stayed with me for all of these years, and for some reason it was forever etched into my mind as the world that I would one day create for myself. A safe, happy, tiny, warm and forever -blue skied kind of utopia where animals lived peacefully and I could live happily ever after. It's funny how things like that can gently sway your grown up choices and lead you to the life you've imagined. As a young adult my dreams and ambitions were all over the map. I spent many years just trying to figure out what exactly I wanted. I tried lots of things, various career moves and house moves and lots of traveling and just living life as it came. But then I met Roger, and as we fell in love and got married and had children, I matured in a deeper, more spiritual way. I experienced loss and pain and extreme highs and lows, and then it became more clear. I started a vision board, just pinning up everything that moved me. Things that made my heart flutter, or filled me with wonder and hope and motivation for a different life. I pinned constantly, and in times of frustration I would rip down the board plastered with all of my dreams and tear it up in despair. Roger would try to save it from the trash and tape it back together, as if to say, "please don't give up." But in my mind we were as far away from buying some old house on acreage as anyone. It really seemed impossible.
But something kept tugging at me. Some deep down urgency. I just knew there was a better life for me, for us, somewhere else. Somewhere greener, somewhere slower, somewhere down a long dirt road. Someplace where I could just be who I wanted to be. It sounds so silly now, to say that it was such a stretch of the imagination. It almost seems laughable. That's the thing about dreams, once you set your mind to them, and take action, they can be reached much easier than you may think.
When I step outside my front door, and sit on my chippy white dusty porch, and shake the cat hair off of the chair cushions, and finally sit and just listen to the quiet at the end of a long day, there is no place I would rather be on earth. I watch the cats chasing one another up a tree, and the geese running awkwardly with their white wings all stretched out, and the chickens once again scratching up the dirt and mulch into the driveway, and the horses just lazily flicking their tails at the flies while they finish their dinner, and it is such sweet harmony. In those moments on my porch, I am back in grade school gazing into my diorama come to life, and it is just as magical as it was then in my young mind. To be filled with wonderment is a gift. Cherish it. Nurture it. It can change your life for the better.
But something kept tugging at me. Some deep down urgency. I just knew there was a better life for me, for us, somewhere else. Somewhere greener, somewhere slower, somewhere down a long dirt road. Someplace where I could just be who I wanted to be. It sounds so silly now, to say that it was such a stretch of the imagination. It almost seems laughable. That's the thing about dreams, once you set your mind to them, and take action, they can be reached much easier than you may think.
When I step outside my front door, and sit on my chippy white dusty porch, and shake the cat hair off of the chair cushions, and finally sit and just listen to the quiet at the end of a long day, there is no place I would rather be on earth. I watch the cats chasing one another up a tree, and the geese running awkwardly with their white wings all stretched out, and the chickens once again scratching up the dirt and mulch into the driveway, and the horses just lazily flicking their tails at the flies while they finish their dinner, and it is such sweet harmony. In those moments on my porch, I am back in grade school gazing into my diorama come to life, and it is just as magical as it was then in my young mind. To be filled with wonderment is a gift. Cherish it. Nurture it. It can change your life for the better.
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