On the mutation of dreams.

I was reading a fellow BiSCuit's blog entry the other day about doing big things.  It touched a nerve, I think, in that way that seeing a dirty plate on a restaurant table reminds that you were going to do the dishes two days go.  There were days, days not too long ago in the grand scheme of things, that I, too, wanted to do big things.  I was going to be a modern poet, bring back formal poetry to the internet generation.  I was going to go to grad school, become a professor, wear sportcoats with elbow patches.  But that dream died when I finished my undergrad, when I sat and tried to write and never could really follow through.  And how do you get a job as a poet?  What kind of ass-brained idea was that?

I dreamed then of becoming a chef, of working the kitchens of the famous and cutting edge, mastering eldritch techniques and innovating the field.  But I am too old to work the line.  I value my sleep too much, my sanity too much.  And as I stepped away from a financial, physical, and emotional investment I'm not comfortable fully disclosing on the intertubes, I realized that my dream of being a quick-service mogul, too, was dead.

But even as these high-falutin' aspirations faded away, others came to the surface.  Just because I no longer feel that burning desire to change the world doesn't mean I don't still have a heart full of dreams.  I want to be the kind of father that makes my kids crack up when they think of me, that can't wait to come home for Thanksgiving break.  I want to run a little soup joint that my neighbors order from when they're too sick to leave the house, where their kids can camp out after school to do their homework.

I don't know what happened.  I wanted something more tangible.  Something I could feel on my skin when someone smiled at me, something I could see in the widening of someone's eyes when they tasted something I created.

My friends are lawyers and scientists, programmers and executives.  There was a time when I looked upon their works and despaired, thrashed myself for not having their ambition or work ethic.  But I don't want their lives.  I want to be the name on their Gchat list they click on when they need advice.  I want to be the door they knock on when they need to get away.

Is it better to be loved by millions of strangers or a select few that really matter in your life?  Would you rather change the world or hold a community together?  Did we really lose these parts of ourselves, or have they simply grown and aged and changed with us?

Do I dream smaller now, or do I just dream different?