I was recently asked what my dreams were, and I had no answer.
Is that sad?
It’s not like I don’t have dreams. I do. But some of the things that once felt like dreams are things I’m actually achieving now, while others feel so close and somehow still so far away.
I want a lot of things out of my life, but I don’t want to be another Kardashian or own a multimillion-dollar business. I don’t dream about being famous, having my name on the side of a building, or living in some giant mansion with rooms I’d probably never even walk into.
I want a house I can call my own. I want a career I love and worked hard to achieve. I want pets running around and, someday, kids of my own. I want to be surrounded by people I love. More than anything, I just want to be happy.
And maybe that sounds simple, but I don’t think it is.
When I first heard “Whole Lotta Little” by Emily Ann Roberts, I felt like she put into words exactly what I had been trying to explain. The song reminds me that you don’t need the biggest, fanciest or most impressive things to feel like you have a full life. That’s what I want. I want a whole lot, but I want my “whole lot” to be made up of little things.
A home that feels like mine. A career I’m proud of. A family to come home to. Dogs running around, books stacked everywhere and people I love filling the rooms. None of those things sound like some crazy, impossible dream on their own, but put them all together and that’s pretty much my dream life.
I can tell you right now that I could be happy in a little farmhouse in the middle of nowhere with a porch swing and enough books to keep me content for days. I could spend my life teaching kids how to read and write every day, getting paid very little compared to the work I put in, and still come home feeling like I did something that mattered. I could have a child asking me a million questions and a dog following me from room to room, and I think I could look around and feel like I had everything I ever wanted.
I want slow mornings and busy afternoons. I want a kitchen that gets messy because people actually cook in it. I want pictures covering the refrigerator and books piled on the nightstand. I want a home that feels lived in. I want holidays that are loud and chaotic and random Tuesday nights spent curled up on the couch doing absolutely nothing.
I want to watch my future kids grow up. I want to watch my students finally understand something they have been struggling with and see that little look on their faces when it finally clicks. I want to come home exhausted from a job I care about. I want family dinners, dogs that leave hair everywhere, a porch swing that probably needs to be repainted and a house that isn’t perfect but is mine.
Maybe that’s why I couldn’t answer when someone asked me what my dreams were.
We’re taught to think of dreams as these massive things. Your dream job. Your dream house. Your dream vacation. The bucket-list accomplishments that make people look at you and say, “Wow, you really made it.”
But I don’t know if I want one big dream.
I think I want hundreds of little ones.
I want the kind of life where the things that make me happiest probably wouldn’t look that exciting to anyone else. I don’t need millions of dollars or thousands of people to know my name. I don’t need my life to look impressive from the outside.
Maybe “making it” for me will look a little different.
Maybe it’ll look like lesson plans spread across the kitchen table, a dog asleep at my feet and toys I just tripped over for the third time that day. Maybe it’ll be a house that’s a little too loud and a little too messy, but full of people I love. Maybe it’ll be sitting on that porch swing one day and realizing that all those little things I dreamed about aren’t dreams anymore.
They’re just my life.
And I think that would be more than enough.
So, what are my dreams?
I want a whole lot.
Just a whole lot of little.