possibilities

as old as I am, I haven't yet lived long enough to thoroughly learn that everything changes.

I want to believe that I've learned this, that I understand it, that I hold it to be true.
but I haven't, and I don't.

I'm literal, I believe in what I see, what I experience. I rely on my past experiences to explain to me how the world works. which isn't all bad, but it's a way of being that struggles valiantly to preclude a belief in possibilities.
and I want to believe in possibilities.
in new outcomes.
in visions of a different way of being.

william blake, some two hundred years ago, wrote these words:
what is now proved was once only imagin'd.

this is difficult for me to internalize. of course at a logical level I understand it completely, and can throw out examples right and left, beginning with airplanes and moving on to the internet and ipods. but I also remember growing up, watching the Jetsons and buying into the belief that by the time I was a full-fledged adult we would all be flying our own little personal cars along the sky freeways above our city.
and that a robot would cook and clean for me.
no one on the Jetsons ever suggested that we would use computers to converse with people around the globe, nor that we would be playing movies and tv show episodes on the desperately slim conversation devices we all carried around with us. though most of us still drive old fashioned gasoline engine cars, the world wide web and iphones and blackberries now exist.

my imagination is too timid.

one day, near the end of last year, I was talking with a friend about dreams, not the nocturnal ones but the ones you have for your life, for your children, for those who inhabit your personal world as well as the great big world itself. at that moment I realized that I had become someone who was afraid to dream big. that there was this something within me that squelched my desires, bisecting them and cutting them down into smaller pieces that would fit in scanty, slight boxes that I labeled Reality, Possible, Likely.
that I had become someone who dreamed little.

I can no longer imagine world peace, and it's hard for me to consider that enough people care about others to make a difference in the way we interact with each other.
I've forgotten what abundance feels like.
I can't imagine that I'll ever ride my bike fast enough to set a new personal best on any route.
all I can envision is me, plowing along, doing the same old thing I've been doing.

now this isn't entirely true: I do have dreams and visions of a different way of being. but I have to fight myself to get myself to accept them. the No You Can'ts and Uh-Uhs and Dream Ons are so very loud they outspeak the quiet voice that insists on a prosperous, successful, competent and capable and happy me.

someday, they'll prove things that I haven't ever even dreamed of. that my mind doesn't know how to imagine.
but I also like to believe that someday, I will prove to myself that those things I've dared to dream, that I've fought back and conquered my pesky ego over, will come to fruition.