There's a scene in the movie in which a very successful entrepreneur opens a box and finds inside it a collection of pictures that were once fantasies, now realized. He suddenly realized that he now lived in the exact same house he had clipped from a magazine and pasted to a board years and years earlier. Not a similar house, but precisely the same one. The man broke down and cried, with joy, presumably, and wonder, in front of his 5-year-old son. The dreams he dared to dream had come true.
Years before that, I too had roughed out a little dream board of my own. I don't even remember what inspired me to do it - quite possibly it was one of those spam emails that goes around. But for some reason I had made three wishes and I had drawn little - and I mean tiny - pictures of those wishes on a hastily cropped piece of printer paper. Not detailed sketches, but fairly simplified symbols. Again, I can't remember what drove me to draw the pictures but clearly I wanted to narrow down and focus on what my dreams actually were so I could make them come true. I would have been about 31 when I did that.
After I saw The Secret the first time, I went looking for that piece of paper. I knew it was tucked into the corner of a photo frame somewhere, somewhere in a box that hadn't been opened since moving, the same as the pictures found by the man in the film.
When I found the paper I beheld the tiny drawings. One was of a baby - a girl with a curl on the top of her head. One was of a group of people, heads and shoulders - friends and family. The third was of a little house with a distinctly pitched roof. A door to the left, a picture window to the right. One window at the top centre.
When I had dared to make these wishes, these seemingly simple wishes, we were going through some things that weren't fun. I had suffered an ectopic pregnancy, and possibly a miscarriage before that. Time was ticking and it didn't seem like we would be able to have the baby girl I wanted. We lived in a home that was very unhappy. Our neighbour was a man in his late 60s or early 70s who hated us beyond any rhyme or reason and made it his life's goal to bring misery upon my husband and I - to the point that he was arrested for criminal harassment. And we often worried deeply about our family members' health for one reason or another - so a guarantee that we'd have them around us for years longer would be very much appreciated.
When I saw that piece of paper and those tiny drawn figures I immediately recognized that bright-eyed baby girl with the curl as Rachel.
And there was no mistaking that I now lived - very happily I must add - in the house I had drawn. With the windows and doors in just the right places, the high-pitched roof, and beside neighbours on both sides and beyond who were over-the-top friendly and welcoming and decent people.
And that third drawing - the little group of smiling faces - were instantly recognizable as my family and friends who were all as healthy and vibrant as I'd wished them to be.
Upon discovering that scrap of paper I experienced an aha-moment that lingers and tears me up to this day, to this moment I'm sharing now with you.
I'm not saying that these drawings created the life I would eventually be living. But they certainly were pinpoint accurate representations of the future that would unfold. Chicken, egg, I don't care. There's something going on. Something meaningful. And something worth taking seriously.
My dream now is to be a writer that people love to read. I'd like to make a living at it. Not just as I already do - I'm a copywriter and I enjoy that very much - but rather writing and being read, as myself. As Dana. In my own voice, or the voices of the characters that live in my mind, and not only the voices of a bank or other corporation. I'm extremely grateful for that work too, but it's okay to dream, right? It's okay to want to see myself with new dreams coming true. Not bigger than the ones that have already come true, necessarily, just new and different ones.
And so I shall dream.
Consider this the chicken-scratches that one day - hopefully soon - I'll look back on and smile, through misty eyes, with joy and wonder.
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| A polaroid photo of us the year we met (1994) along with the piece of paper bearing the drawings of my three wishes. |
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