Are My Dreams Legitimate?
Learning to reclaim personal dreams in a world that rewrites them
Ages ago, I was happily borrowing everyone else’s lives and art on Pinterest for my own curated tapestry when I unexpectedly ‘stumbled’ upon this cutting gem.
It wasn’t paired with a photo like this version; instead, the words were in a blank frame, typed in a plain font. I only half-remember the aesthetic of it all. Nevertheless, they’ve hovered just beneath my awareness, unconsciously poking at my naturally stubborn nature which has grown altogether too compliant over the countless days spent desiring for my life to be born again into a carefully cultivated creation. Not harmful in small doses, actually—I enjoy beauty, I enjoy arranging items in photo scenes to be just so, and I smile when a perfect set of somethings creates a variety of colors that are impossibly satisfying when paired together.
Inspiration from Pinterest, TikTok, Instagram, and Substack can’t be completely wrong, because we live in a world where our tastes are often mixed up with everybody else’s around us, especially those of our dearest friends. Going to the nail salon with another woman’s design or color choice on your phone, ready to display to the manicurist, isn’t identity theft.
So why does it feel that way? Because it does, if I’m honest. It feels as if pinning others’ stunning photos of grueling hikes or obsessing over everyone else’s golden retrievers online is somewhat of a gateway to mega disappointment in my own life. It isn’t confined to online spheres only, either. Going to the gym, shopping for clothes, purchasing groceries, there is always another admirable woman who catches my eye, always a glimpse of scenery that I wish belonged to me, some product that, if only I could afford it, my quality of life would be elevated to another state of tranquility.
And the deeper this seed of identity theft (willingly planted) has grown roots, the less I have struggled against its invasion. There are more days than not when it is common for me to wholeheartedly acquiesce to its presence and even water it myself.
Early on in childhood development, our separation between the other and the self is established with fairly distinct lines. We grow to know our own limits and those of others. Healthy desires and impulses are encouraged while unhealthy ones are not; this process is often guided by parental figures. We stand and we fall, only to rise again courageously. What if, during our teenage to young adult years, we are regressing? What if we are meshing ourselves into the culture’s ‘norms’ and societal constructs that are pretentious and dangerously unachievable?
When I was a little girl, I would obsessively ‘play princess’. Alternately, I played the roles of fierce warrior queen, damsel in distress, or lovestruck lady. On all accounts, I was dressed to the nines. Hair done, jewelry on, outrageously itchy ball gown donned, and even little heels were worn. I didn’t mess around—when I pretended, I meant business. I not only dreamed, I made it happen. My younger brother was cast the role of rescuing prince, faithful best friend/sidekick, or evil mad genius. Of course, being the older sibling, I was the main character of my own story, and I owned it. I knew even at seven years old, that in order to really experience the world of princesses, fairytale romances, dragons, and evil spirits, I needed to enact the role; internally embrace this imaginary universe where landscapes, darkness, light, wars, dancing, magic, were more vividly real than the playroom in which it all took place.
The beige carpet, yellow walls, and toy-laden surfaces disappeared behind the experience of falling into an entirely new world where colors took on vibrant hues never to be seen in the world bound by laws and limits. I can recall, even at this moment, my rage at being disturbed in the middle of a vicious fight against dark warriors from the Black Forest. My mom’s summons to lunch or snack left me breathlessly upset and momentarily confused as I reoriented myself to reality.
Other days, I was enraptured by the adventures of riding horses and being a horse doctor. I had one of those American Girl Doll-sized horses with a mane and tail that could be styled, and I remember volunteering my ever-patient grandma to pose for a photoshoot with said horse.
In either case, the dreams that I held inside were so large, so vivid, so uniquely my own, unclaimed by others. Was I influenced by My Little Pony or Cinderella? By Narnia or Super Why? Undoubtably. But I don’t recall any moment in my imagined games when I compared and then disregarded or shifted my wish for the world to match those of other real people around me. I was always one to do something all the way (hence my elaborate dress-up) and to know my own mind in the way I thought things ought to be done. Unfortunately, I’m afraid that I’ve taken the all-or-nothing mindset into my carefully curated and socially praised lifestyle.
Sometime during my middle school years, the colorful fantasies which accompany childhood began to fade into greyscale shadows that slowly dissolved completely as adulthood caught up with me. But there were those years of 6th-8th grade, where the pull of reality and my ambitions could still be held in tandem. There were days when becoming a veterinarian wasn’t such a far-off reality, times when I could almost taste a professional ballerina in me. Self-consciousness crept in, though, as well as the potentiality to become assimilated to whatever my current environment was.
Once I reached high school, I was more than ready for Instagram. I launched my account like I knew a crowd was waiting on tenterhooks for me to share my whole life’s story. For the preceding years leading up to freshman year, I had been trained by trendy cliques (that I was not invited to be part of), teenage boy hormones, and the Christian bubble to be the ‘it’ girl. Even though the ‘It Christian Girl’ didn’t even exist yet, I swear I was the prototype—one of many. The world around me and the way I interpreted it worked together to dispel me of my own imagination, my own critical thinking, and most relevant of all: of my dreams, or, what they would call, ‘not good enough’. Anything that didn’t match the vibe of my spheres was a hard no.
Somewhere along the line, it became all about, “How am I presenting myself and my ambitions? Is this ambition in line with what others around me are doing? If not, what’s wrong with me and how can I curate myself back into line?”
Our culture is on a fast track to
rewriting our desires.
Kori Spaulding1 expresses her excruciating awareness of our social media rewiring in a haunting poem (published over at Jon Haidt’s Substack, After Babel2):
I have become self-aware. Almost worse than being naive. I know it’s poison, but I drink away.
The character behind the phone screen has become self-aware.
We used to be scared of robots gaining consciousness, a lie by the media companies.
To keep us distracted enough, so not to become conscious of the mess they created.
We are the robots. We are the product. And so I sit and I scroll and I rot on repeat.
Sit and scroll and rot.
Until my thoughts are what is being fed to me on TV,
until my feelings are wrapped up in celebrities,
until my body is a tool of my political identity.
I sit and I scroll and I rot.
I can make a case for social media being the dream-crusher, or more accurately, the almost sentient presence that reimagines dreams for us. I know that to be part of my own story. With the rise of influencers, everybody’s lives are a selling point. But what happens when one day I wake up and I’m shocked to find I’m selling my life to myself? When the realization hits that what I have, who I’m friends with, and what I do, is never going to be enough, not even for me. “Dream bigger,” they say, “You are more than enough to do great things!”; “Who do you want to become?” is really a cover for “What are you going to accomplish?”, which in turn seems to convey another unspoken followup: “Because if you don’t achieve your curated dreams, what’s the point of your existence?”
The little girl hiding away in my heart feels stunted and trapped, while the glamorous, worldly-wise adult can’t help but feel empty despite all of the dreamy lives she’s tried on, one after the other, with that glimpse of happiness almost within reach, but not quite. Dreams aren’t about what I desire or what fills me up, but instead morph into a hungry No-Face creature3 that can’t stop despite our desperation to starve the easy compliance in ourselves.
In particular, being both a Gen Z’er and a young woman, approval seems to be the invitation to that secret and exclusive club, the answer to belonging and identity. Curation is the key to a purpose-driven life, and who doesn’t want purpose? I want purpose, I want identity, and I want meaning.
Numerous times, I’ve found myself daydreaming about a mysterious Prince Charming figure (as tall, dark, and handsome as they make them) sweeping me up in his arms, confessing he ardently loves and admires me, and promptly offering his hand. I imagine adventures with him, traveling to distant countries and exchanging sappy compliments in whispered tones.
When I catch myself though, I’m disturbed to find that my real desire — to love and be loved, to sit across from an empathetic, endearing, and gentle man with our hands intertwined as we discuss our individual existential crises while drinking day-old coffee — has silently, sensuously, been replaced by a vision of some unrealistic person that doesn’t exist, nor would he be someone I am in actuality, even interested in.
And really, at the end of it, do I even want to be in a relationship that badly, right now, in this moment? Or is it simply me feeling a lack of something that others have and I do not? Amidst mental gymnastics, I’m acutely aware of the ‘offness’ of my feelings, my inmost thoughts. The spiritual misalignment that is the result of leaving my dreams open as prey to the dangers of a false sense of maturity. As my hopes and fears for the future dwindle, something else always comes to take their place — because we cannot live without dreams. Dreams are what we are made of, what we were made for.
What is this dissonance in the core of ourselves that threatens to break like thunder in the wake of a lightning strike? How did we find ourselves here, breaking ourselves into little pieces, doing all we can to become what we think we should be rather than embracing who we have always been and what we desire to become? We sit and we scroll and we rot. But we don’t just scroll on our phones. We mentally scroll, day in and day out. Grocery store line, scroll. Clothes shopping, scroll. Conversation over coffee, scroll. It is a never-ending tragedy that our bodies and minds can’t help but dance to the beat of.
Cosmopolitan Magazine reported these aesthetics I searched and screenshotted as a few of the most trending ones in 2024.4 These ones I included range from “e-girl” to “clean girl”. There’s apparently a “kidcore” one too (I have so many problems with this one, but I’ll save it).
But what could happen if I could, if we all could
return to the God of our childhood dreams?
I don’t feel that it is overkill or dramatic of me that, at times, I feel as David did in Psalm 31:
I am forgotten like a dead man, out of mind;
I am like a broken vessel.
For I hear the slander of many;
Fear is on every side;
While they take counsel together against me,
They scheme to take away my life.
The other day, I confessed to myself that I hated job interviews. That’s not much of a revelation, but the reason for my hatred was. I despise that feeling of needing to sell myself, of needing to promote what I have to offer, sometimes lying through my teeth about skillsets I don’t think I actually have, because I am beyond desperate. Bleeding into all parts of life, the push to have to sell what you are or worse, what you think you should be, follows me everywhere. In dating, potential friendships, jobs, at church group get-togethers. Sell and hope someone likes you enough to buy into you.
I feel forgotten sometimes, like a broken vessel. I experience a deep, wrenching anxiety when I don’t appear consistently in ‘my aesthetic’, when my dreams don’t align with my immediate culture. And meanwhile, the world schemes to take away my life.
There is another way. A better way. A way out.
It’s a life unencumbered by forced curation (because curation is sometimes pretty wonderful) and dreams that don’t belong to us. It’s a life confident that where Jesus has us, who he made us to be, and all of our clashing quirks uniquely belong to us, and us alone. Nobody can be me, nobody can be you. And the culture likes to applaud us for similitude and sameness, for 100% consistency and a collected personality.
But we are made after God’s own image, a complex, multi-faceted God. He is perfect, complete, lacking nothing. But He is not curated, collected, or compliant. We cannot be anything but complex, at times messy, and fully human in all we do.
In the car earlier, I reflected on my blissful excitement to draw, to paint out a scene that I thought beautiful, or to sketch a rough copy of a distant memory. Or, more realistically, to find inspirational artwork on Pinterest and make it my own. I recalled the joys of collage and art journaling, seeking treasures in old Vogue magazines and pasting them onto blank pages to create a visual expression of who I am. The days when I didn’t feel compelled to only read Classical literature but experimented with middle-grade novels and young-adult fantasy. More clearly than the precise activity, I was aware of the pleasure these things brought me as a creative and expressive human.
Dreaming freely, having the compassion for myself to admit and then nurture my innate desires, that is what brings about hope for a better tomorrow and joy in current circumstances.
What could it look like to dream with God rather than joining in the world’s epic hamster wheel race toward ‘success’? How would it free me, to be transplanted from where I am, back to the closeness and security of a God who makes dreams not only possible but probable? Back to the God of my childhood. The God who spun fairytales and wayward paths in my youth, who reminds me even now, in the early years of a grown-up existence, that enchantment and wonder are the needed marrow in our too-brittle bones?
What would it be like if
I practiced authentic dreaming?
And that journey is one I am on now. It feels as if for the past few years, God is doing the heavy lifting of renewing my mind, renewing my childlike wishes. ‘Fantasies’ is sometimes labeled as an immoral word, but fantasies are simply the dreams we harbor in the hiddenness of our hearts, which express our deepest felt desires. Fantasies are what we need in tough times, the lonely times, the disappointing ones.
Escaping to my preferred spot outside in order to pull out the beloved journal and write about my deepest fears and joys; laying in the baking sun to feel the warmth seep into my numbed and chilled frame; swinging in a child’s swing, desperately desiring to fly; praying on my knees, eyes riveted on an icon depicting a lonely sheep at peace on the shoulders of the Shepherd, my trusting posture matching the sheep’s gentle rest. These are the avenues in which dreams are made and reborn.
This isn’t about being extraordinary but about being grounded and rooted in love. Being content at a soul level with who you already are and who you will become, outside of cultural norms and societal constraints that would prompt us all to be the ‘It Girls’.
I still ‘borrow’ other people’s lives online. I love curating aesthetics and pretty things, creating holistically pleasing environments. My spaces are a testament to my creative abilities in that way. But I don’t want my dreams to be trampled by the culture claims that they are inadequate, simple, or irrelevant. I, and I only, have the power to dream dreams that I know are true to me and who God has innately designed me to be. Nobody and nothing can take that from me or from you, friend.
And it shall come to pass afterward
That I will pour out My Spirit on all flesh;
Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
Your old men shall dream dreams,
Your young men shall see visions.- Joel 2:28
A spirit from the Hayao Miyazaki film, Spirited Away. HIGHLY recommend watching this film.