The Things I’ve Wanted in Life

by | Jan 17, 2022 | Road Notes

Small dreams, large dreams, we make it. It's ours, our list. It contributes to all and one. It makes...something.

I wanted five things. I wanted other “things” but they had to do with people, and these do too, because these things are all shared things, things for me to make me a better…something. Perhaps, just a better story in my own estimation?

That doesn’t matter.

I don’t pretend to understand why these are my things.

But just five.

These were the things I Really wanted. Oh, have I wanted these things! Scenarios, plans, adventures of the mind were tied like weed root, like capillaries that radiated from and captivated my heart, mind and imagination. The idea of having them was somehow an idea of me.

  • First, was a VW camper bus. I was 15, 13, younger?
  • Then, a motorcycle. I was 21.
  • Then, a breakfast restaurant in the mountains. I was 23.
  • Then, a cabin in the woods I would build with my own hands.
  • (There was a mule involved, but let’s leave that alone.) I was 23.
  • Then, finally, a theater of my own, under the stars. I was 43.

Many other wants, wants having to do with relationships, wants to possess knowledge and skill, wants to be close, wants having to do with family, friendship, career, adventure…

But just these five things.

All made my heart sing at a very high level, just as a contemplation, as a dream machine. The energy in them never waned.

This desire included a desire to reach, to look and to find story’s truth.

I had lost sight of all of these things several years ago, would have said they were no longer important to me. I even had the motorcycle, but is was broken, dusty, and I was contemplating selling it. It was no longer a dream.

Zero for five.

But much changed that I didn’t entirely realize.

Then yesterday happened.

One year ago I got a new car that I really like. January 15, 2021. It’s…beautiful and…useful. But it was not a fulfillment. It was not a dream. Two days ago, I realized that yesterday was its anniversary. Car day.
And… a serendipity of events that would make fate blush had to happen – as I see it came to pass with all these things – that odd place where chance, fate, divine guidance and intention meets vision had to come together.

Yesterday, January 15, I got number one, the first dream. See image. (I know you already saw it!). Isn’t she lovely?

But I was stunned – not really – but driven wide in mind when I realized that these cradles of having, of dreams, came into action in my life, into full use really, in a sort of bizarre reverse order.

The theater, the cabin, the restaurant, the motorcycle, the bus. I brought them to life, in mind in one order, and they came into being in an overlapping, reverse order.

What is that? What IS that? What does that say? Who are we? What are we? Are we no more than the stuff that dreams are made on? But what wonderful “stuff” that is.

Small dreams, large dreams, we make it. It’s ours, our list. It contributes to all and one. It makes… something.

Sometimes it seems that even those things we don’t want we somehow make. I can argue either side of that, and that contemplation is a complexity. This is a simplicity.

As far as the dream stuff, I had “forgotten” number one, the first. The bus. It was “gone.” But it was not really gone, not what I had put there, what it meant in how I saw it. It was just rounded with a little sleep that awaken when I saw this wonderful bus.

I’m… done, in that sense, stuff, and it feels good. I feel vistas.

I realize that these five things have something in common. Each of these things is not just an object, but a toy.

A child’s toy and endless play.