the dreams you dream come directly from the world you live in

There’s a friend I know, or a morphed creature of all the friends I know who I despise but only on Sundays.

Question four in the Proust Questionnaire asks you “What is the trait you most deplore in others?“. I was sat down with my back against the outside of my house as I wrote down “I think it’s when people don’t try too much. I think it’s when people don’t dream big for themselves“.

I spent my university days in a whirlwind. First I found myself 1193km away from home in Amsterdam, and then something like 15448km away, in Melbourne. And I met a lot of people. Obviously, as you do when you expose yourself to the outside. I met people I fell in love with, their faces, but also their opinions or the way they wrote my name down. I then met people I looked up to, some strangers I saw daily who never became more than that, but our paths crossed as if we were stuck in some ecosystem we haven’t yet figured out. Whether it worked for or against us. I also met some people and instantly said not for me and then months later a friend texts me - you were right about her. And then I felt like a psychic.

When you go out of your way, the one paved out for you by default, the number of people you surround yourself with extends beyond what you ever expected.

And then I came back. There’s no more kilometers away. The kilometers I go through daily now, I know them, there’s nothing new about the radius.

There’s all the talking. In my mother tongue. The letters slip off easily, no hesitation, as I speak with people I knew, I know or am getting to know now. We speak of Warsaw, we complain, we share plans, yet, people have been saying a lot that they don’t want to plan too much, go with the flow.

But when we do talk about plans, sometimes I realize that the plan can be just staying as it is, exactly where we are. The lack of change in the radius is exactly what they want. Then I think to myself - it can’t be right. And quickly, I realize it makes me sound like I’m trying to be above them. Then I have to act like I was concentrated on whatever they were saying for the last minute or two.

So I started to dissect this feeling. Because more often than we like to realize, the way we feel about others starts somewhere inside us. So I got to thinking. How come we dream so differently?

Today I dreamed about having a cottage house on a little hill near a stream. Silence and a good book. Never having to worry about money. But I also dream about fame, or some fraction of it. Of having people read what I write and like it, just a little bit. I dream of having 20 years during the 10 years of my 20s, because a little bird keeps telling me that I have to stack them up full with everything. I dream of having enough time.

And then I hear someone saying that their dream is here, exactly where they are. And maybe where envy should be, there is anger, because how come? How come you don’t want to take years off work and just travel, with a backpack and a spoon for all your utensils? Or live on the other side of the world just to try? Or maybe ruin your 5-year plan by falling in love with someone, to then realize it was actually not the right decision, but you don’t hate yourself for it anyway? I did get voted the first one to get divorced by some. How can the dream be to stay exactly where you are, confined by comfort?

But I digress. I was meant to dissect this anger.

And recently, at work, while I was daydreaming, I realized that the dreams we have come directly from the life we live. I have been daydreaming about being an author. Writing as the only thing I do - a beautiful picture. I was always scared of that picture, though, or have never fully believed it, didn’t have the energy to embrace it.

I didn’t choose a course at university that was strictly arts, because I was scared that it wasn’t stable enough as a laying ground for my future. I never even imagined getting money for writing something, anything. Now I know this to be a wrong assumption, I have been paid (once!) for my writing. So I wondered: why? Why did I never allow myself to think that writing could be something for me, full-time? Well, because it was never around. Writing was something that only existed in books. I never knew a writer growing up. I knew people who worked for other people or opened up businesses. I have never known people who spoke about their love for putting pen to paper.

We won’t dream about things until we don’t know about them, could be a quote that works here. When I moved out, I didn’t do it out of a dream of leaving everything behind; it was just a possibility that presented itself in front of me, and so I took it. The second time around, however, I dreamt of it. Why? Because I already did it once. I knew how leaving everything behind felt like and the rush it gives you, well, I liked that.

The people I have met, those I wrote about in the beginning, they only made me sure of my thesis here. I have friends now who lead very different lives from mine. I have a friend who will become an academic. That path also always felt unapproachable. How do you make money from that? What do you do? Yet now, now that I know people who are doing so, I could see myself dreaming of it. I won’t because there’s not enough of an academic bone in me, but I could dream.

There’s another friend who lives a life that seems very peaceful. There’s a lot of nature and not much rush. And there’s a belief that you don’t need to plan too much, it will just happen. That’s life, very different from the one I’m trying out right now in the city. Adults surround me, or people, me included, who try to be adult-passing. We think of savings accounts, of pensions, of sleeping enough, and maybe joining a running club.

Maybe it seems banal what I’m trying to get at here. After all, doing what your parents are doing is not a new thing. But this is something bigger. It is not only about the environment you’re in. It’s about the active act of pushing it. I am very interested in all the possibilities that arise once you make the little step forward.

If we only stay in one place, there’s only a subset of dreams we can come up with. Because, as much as we think that dreams are our own thing, a private something, it is the collective consciousness that creates a big chunk of them.

Maybe each country has one, or each continent, or maybe each socio-economic class. But there are definitely groups of people with similar dreams. And once you become an outlier to that group, your dreams will change. And those of the group will remain, and it will pain you, because you will see them as stagnant. But what they are is just you, but some time ago. And maybe the best thing to do is to keep moving forward and allow the others to come where you are, or let them stay, because their dreams are equally as important as yours.

And as easy it is to get completely blown away by the way other people live and dream, so much of that is defined by that same subset of dreams they were given. When in Australia, I often caught myself comparing myself to the way they walk there - sometimes barefoot, with ease, the way they talk - making the vowels long and buttery, or the way they travel - to Japan, because it’s close by. But most of these things are completely normal for people from there.

By being there, I became an outlier to the group I’m from, yet the people I’m compared myself to were very much embedded into their group. Which makes them exact same people I found myself getting agry at, now, back in Poland.

So well. Comparison is the killer of joy. And dreams? Dreams are very good to have. But don’t steal dreams from others, create your own, because only then do they truly work.