Dreaming Your Life Away?

A few months ago I was hiking through Galicia, Spain on the Camino De Santiago. I was walking on my quest to reach Santiago de Compostela. This is something I had dreamed of doing for a long time. Three years ago I had planned on doing this sacred hike and I had even been training for it; but as life will sometimes do, I was forced to delay my plans. I tore my ACL knee ligament and my meniscus while playing tennis, and I needed surgery to repair the damage. Then the Covid pandemic came and delayed my plans yet again.

However, I was finally doing it!One day during my eight day hike, I ran into a little settlement and a little souvenir shop that was run my a sole proprietor. This guy had all sorts of Camino and Camino inspired paraphernalia. Since I still had to hike about ten miles that day, I wasn’t going to add weight to my backpack; so I didn’t plan on buying anything at all. However, this shop owner was a character and a very persuasive salesman; so it happened that before I knew it, he had tied a bracelet type band on my wrist, I had paid him one Euro, I had stamped my Peregrino passport credential, and was on my way!

I left thinking, “this guy is one good salesman…” and I said to my friend, “He was not letting us go without buying something”… and we laughed. He really was good. I think his talent is somewhat wasted there…haha.

A little while later I actually looked at the bracelet he had strapped to my wrist. It was bright blue and it said “No sueñes tu vida… Vive tus sueños”. Which translates to “Don’t dream away your life…Live your dreams”. I really liked it. It was perfect. And it also made me think.

“That’s in my bucket list”, I hear people say all the time. When I hear that, I always think “What are you waiting for?”… but I don’t say it. I have learned that for the most part, people are “dreamers”. I’m not only talking about trips, adventures, or places to visit. I believe people can also dream away the kind of life they would like, the kind of relationships they would love, the jobs that they would truly enjoy, while doing nothing to attain it. I know because I used to dream my life away.

I hear things like, “Honestly, I always thought there would be time… I would think…later…I’ll do it later”; but the problem with that kind of thinking is that “later” doesn’t really exist. Later is too late.

There is a general belief that there will be time to do it…later. That there is a tomorrow. However, the fact is that tomorrow is not guaranteed. You really must act now. That is…unless you are okay with just the dream; because if you don’t take action, it will never become a reality. It really is that simple.

This reminds me of a joke by the late cuban comedian Alvarez Guedes… it went something like this:

There is a guy that would go to the church every day to pray in front of the statue of a saint. He would beg and beg everyday, “Please please saint help me win the lottery”. This went on and on for weeks on end. Until the one day, that the saint had had enough!…Coming to life he desperately said to him… “Okay okay but please please BUY THE TICKET!!” Haha.

This is true for everything in life. If you want to go somewhere, then buy the ticket! If you want a different partner in life, then move on. If you want to work on doing something else, then go for broke. Take chances, the truth is that the moment of absolute certainty never arrives. So choose to live a life of no regrets. In other words…it’s better to get lost than to never begin the journey.