The gifts we carry are worthy sharing.
Talents, many of us disowned in our passage to adulthood.
Those desires and dreams that were trivialized and deprioritized by the voices we esteemed.
So gifts that had laid dormant, are buried.
Our society, priding itself built on abandoning dreams for practicality. Following the rhetoric masked as rationality - that abandoning self is a necessity, a prerequisite to pursue a commonly understood definition of success.
So we succeed. In all the ways that we were told success translates. We are carbon copies of the collectively defined template. We cut away at the parts of ourselves that did not fit. We followed the recipe expecting that it will provide the happiness, fulfillment, and meaning that such lofty pursuits procure. Letting go of our dreams for the "real" thing. The matching lawns and the cookie cutter houses. Hidden talents and gifts, not required.
Surprise.
Turns out this time spent, is time wasted.
In all the sacrifice and compromise, despite checking all the boxes that pre-defined success required... we are trapped.
Living a reality of someone else's choosing, we come to learn that fulfillment is rarely found in walking in someone else's shoes, and living in someone else's dream.
We realize that there are certain things in life that we cannot earn by following a rubric and copying a template.
That fulfillment and meaning where never things we dared achieve, they were always within us to unearth.
What's been buried has long since departed. We are no longer the dreamers we once were. Having traded in our freedom for the realities that we are tied to... the lives we find ourselves beholden to. We are the sum of every choice, sacrifice and compromise... to satisfy others and to spite ourselves.
Alignment came at too high a cost when circumstances demanded for change... for commitment; and time is unforgiving.
In turn, we begin the lesson on misery.
That misery stems from sacrifice too much, for too little.
Sacrificing our dreams was always too high a price to pay, but indeed we paid in full.
To then find, that misery also loves company.
So we gravitate and commune in kind, talking about our castaway dreams, wishing on a life we weren't prepared to fight for when the opportunity had once presented itself.
Losing hope that the future will ever present an equivalent chance... or even a fighting chance.
So take the cautionary tale.
Trust your dream to be the guiding light to what fulfills you, let it be the torch that lights your way forward in this life, on your journey.
And in the presence of misery... don't forget to shine.