Ideas on pursuing our individual dreams, not the dreams of others. Learning to hear our inner voice to guide us toward them while filtering out the noise of modern society’s dream pushers.
Hi,
It looks like I’m on an every-other-week cadence with the newsletter now. My intention is to return to writing it weekly.
Not sending JRWI weekly is an indicator that I may be unbalanced. When I don’t make time to send this, it’s usually because I’m pushing too hard at work. This indicator is another reason I feel grateful for this newsletter.
Pushing too hard reminds me of The Dream’s distraction. When writing the above introduction, I became aware of not saying I’m “too busy” to write the newsletter.
Rather than reactively saying I’m “too busy”, I see not writing as an indicator that something’s unbalanced, as I describe above. I feel fortunate for this awareness, as it’s this “too busy” idea that’s one of The Dream’s greatest power sources.
The Dream enlists The Dream Pushers to keep us chasing The Dream itself. The Dream Pushers are sadly effective. They play off our wants, fears and dreams to keep us pushing harder and faster, then even harder and faster than that, in a never-ending cycle.
It’s this cycle that convinces us we’re “so busy” or “too busy”, all the time. We become too busy to think consciously and clearly.
We get too busy to slow down and ask ourselves questions like -
Why are we so busy?
Do we have to be so busy, is there an alternative?
What are we so busy doing, what dream are we chasing, ours or The Dream?
Then The Dream Pushers exploit this feeling of business again. They push their messages and suggestions on us, as if they’re the answers we need.
Because we’re “so busy”, we unconsciously accept the messages and suggestions they push on us. We do this because doing so reduces the number of uncomfortable questions we need to ask ourselves. Accepting the messages and suggestions also reduces the number of decisions we need to make.
Yet it’s these very questions and decisions that allow us to break The Dream’s grasp. Not asking and making them keeps us chasing The Dream and prevents us from pursuing our Dreams.
It’s these very questions and decisions we need to ask and make, to begin pursuing our Dreams. To me, this makes these questions and decisions the most important we need to make.
How about you? Is the “so busy” distraction preventing you from asking these questions and making these decisions?
Let me know by replying to this email. I respond to every reply.
Catch you next week (hopefully!),
Chris
Photo of the Week
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Current Reading List
Cryptography: A Very Short Introduction by Fred C. Piper
The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World by Dalai Lama XIV, Desmond Tutu, Douglas Carlton Abrams
Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke
Current Playlist
Check out my Soundcloud profile for more music.