Pipe dreams….
Escape from reality and the trail of heartache it leaves in the wake…
Pipe dreams….seems harmless and I am not referring to a hookah, bong, smoking pipe of vapor cig…..I am addressing the escape mechanism of Pipe Dreams …a seemingly harmless daydream that can cause a tsunami of dead end relationships, unhappiness and unfulfillment.
My Mother was a master of this art. She was an unfashionably divorced, single Mom in the 1960’s when it was considered to be as disgraceful as rolling around in the mud with pigs. (which would have been easier!)
After my step father died when I was 14 years old, my brother left to seek an easier path and lived with our biological father in California. That left Mom and I to navigate through the aftermath of my mother losing everything she and my stepfather had worked so hard for during the 1970’s real estate boom. We were just busted. Mom developed what she fondly referred to as “Pipe Dreams.” Her ‘fantasy that helped her get through her reality.” It was a fun mental exercise that she and I shared and it usually started with, “someday we will…..” fill in the blank.
Don’t get me wrong, I am a daydreamer at heart and this activity played in nicely to what I was already a natural at. I nearly flunked out of school for being too good at daydreaming. I became so good at it that I used my own Pipe Dreams to navigate my own divorced and single mom status in the late 1990's!
I know, you are thinking…”big deal”…right? Yep…it is a big deal! Once I realized how this Self Defense mechanism or survival tactic, had become the weapon that destroyed relationships of any kind! Work, personal friendships, intimate or committed relationships…you name it…I can go back and see the trail of destruction I left behind.
How? Think about daydreaming….or a pipe dream…it is a dream of something that is different from where you find yourself in the present moment. For example, “someday, I will travel the world and experience new cultures.” Meanwhile, you are stuck working at a factory plugging the same two wires into a vacuum part for 22 years. Bravo, the pipe dream got you thru 22 years of a low paying job and left you feeling, unfulfilled, a nobody, just existing, barely making it. You go home and look around at your struggling life and start diving off the deep end into depression. So, one day your wife calls you out on your pipe dreams; “what about travel? When does that happen for us? We can barely pay the light bill!”
Pipe Dreams create an ‘expectation.”
The destruction of expectations….You see that nice little vision came with an attachment, and outcome, a desired result….an expectation of ‘someday.’
When I realized that my “creative ideas, goals and visions” had become a glorious modification of the “Pipe Dream — self defense mechanism;” I also realized that my friends and loved ones bought into my visions with their emotional investment of my “someday.”
My Pipe Dreams unconsciously hurt others…
I sat on the front porch of my dear friends house and she announced that she would be returning to college to become a nurse. There we were, two single Moms, struggling with the day to day concerns of scrapping the floor boards of our rusted vehicles to gather enough change to buy Taco Bell for our kids and me and my pipe dreams…I congratulated my dear friend with her new found decision to become a nurse and was truly happy for her. Then she said, “what about you?” I had an endless supply of dreams in my pipe line and they made me very happy. I confidently stated, “oh, I just bought this book on flipping houses…fix them up and repair them, then turn around and sell them for a sizeable profit. I will buy 10 houses a year, sell them in 10 years and average 20–30k profit off of each one and have a great start to my retirement!”
My friend looked at me and said, “I was just starting to feel good about my life….you always make me feel like I am not doing enough!” I was dumbfounded! What the heck did she mean by all that??!! I thought it was a fabulous idea. One I could never shake down my pipe line to create a reality.
The heartache of the Pipe Dream in close relationships…
My children never seemed to buy into my pipe dreams. I think they were wiser or just didn’t care to listen. “There goes Mom again….daydreaming.” They never took me serious. My partners did though. The last committed relationship I was in, suffered the greatest pain of my pipe dreams.
My last partner and I bought a fixer upper house in North Dakota and some lake lots down the street from the house. I immediately could visualize a thousand pipe dreams for these properties. “Let’s buy two old churches, move them onto the lake lots, connect them with a cool butterfly-green house structure…you can have your naturopath clinic in one restored church and I can have the other for my metaphysical ministry…”….the dream went on and on…My partner loved the idea and could ‘see’ it as well. It didn’t happen, like so many of my pipe dreams. Mom had left me with a destructive ‘fantasy to get me through my reality” weapon.
I only have myself to blame…I was mentally programmed into a behavior pattern that was so natural to me, I was unaware that it was even ‘playing’ in the background of my everyday coping strategies.
Then it hit me like a tsunami! Months after our official breakup, I realized the emptiness, disappointment, lost expectations, dreams unfulfilled that haunted my ex partner. It started to haunt me this time too!
I set the expectations of a wonderful dream, vision and hope for something grand and long term! I was a master at flushing the pipe dreams out when I didn’t need them anymore. The souls that actually dreamt with me became drowned in the loss and bereavement of unfulfilled wishes. I was oblivious to the wake of my unintentional destruction.
Attachments to something and expectations of a desired outcome can only lead to unhappiness.
“When you have no expectations, you have everything.” I forget who said that metaphor…but it is so true!
Letting go of attachments to people, places, things, dreams…..releases them and you from the expectation that goes with the category. That doesn’t mean to not love others or be creative in your thought process….that just means to direct your creativity towards ‘situations and solutions’ and to allow others to be who they are. Trust, let go and allow the doors to open for you….knock on the ones you want to possibly open and then wait to see which door opens for you.
Life becomes a fun game when you flow with it. Most often we are our own worst enemy of our dreams…be happy here and now and with what you have….be grateful for everything…happiness is an inside job.
I have learned to direct my daydreams into visualizations in my meditations. I do not want to ever leave another soul in the path of my pipe dream devastation. With my new found awareness, I am at peace and no longer dream of ‘someday.’ “Someday” is not a day of the week! It is right here, right now, TODAY!
Be well, be happy and be peaceful~
