in need of a vision

A people without a vision perish, or at least stagnate. 

And maybe that's what my problem's been all along. 

Since college, going on four years now (OMG), I've been doing nothing but chasing empty dreams and biding my time. It's been wholly unproductive. My old vision--to get my degree, meet a wife at C.C.U., find a job at a back-country church and start a family--fell apart. None of that happened, despite my efforts in every regard, and it came to the point where any hoping that it could or would happen felt more like an escapist technique than anything else. I gave up on the vision, and I could do nothing but exist as best I could, and despite little wins here-and-there, there hasn't been any forward movement. This lack of my movement is largely due, I think, to the lack (or absence) of vision. My vision must be put together, or at least rekindled. Goals have to be forged and steps taken. 

What do I want to do?

Who do I want to be? 

What do I want my life to look like in three years? five years? ten years?

And, most importantly, how do I get there?

All my life people have told me that I've got what it takes to do and be something great. I've got an odd sort of charisma (if we can call it that), I've got all the quirks necessary to be an original success, and there's a good bit of intelligence stored away in this sometimes-less-than-adequate brain of mine. The critical key may simply be sustained, concentrated effort; and the lack of that ties back to the lack of a vision and thus lack of steps taken to get there.

I don't want to just exist anymore.

I don't want to watch people moving forward as I'm stuck in the mud.

If regret must be the rhythm of my life, I want to minimize as much of it as I can.

That's a noble enterprise, wouldn't you say?

"Fuck the past," Dylan told me so long ago. "Don't let it define your life. Look ahead and move forward. Don't let your experiences be your 'god.' We all let our experiences define our beliefs and how we live. But sometimes we need to simply realize that just because something has been the same way for so long doesn't mean it should be so or that it will be so in the future. Things change, Anth; opportunities are found, people are changed, and some, once cynical and stoic, can even find that they only believed the way they did because they experienced heartache and disappointment. Experience doesn't equal truth. Experience doesn't say what your future will be like or what you can change on your own. Don't lose hope. Without hope we're dead, life becomes meaningless, and I don't see that in you."

I like Dylan a lot, and not just because he's wise.

(We all have our moments, even me).

I think on his words often. It's no secret that I'm nostalgic as hell, and that nostalgia is very much tied to the importance of the past I put on my life. This isn't an importance the past should have; the past indeed doesn't dictate the future. History is cyclical, but only to a point. Dylan's right: I shouldn't let my past define my life. I shouldn't let the heartaches, the betrayals, the fears and insecurities, the disappointments and embarrassments, the empty hopes and fruitless dreams, any of this define my life. There's a certain weariness to remembering the past all too well, a downside to abandoning rose-colored lenses. "Look ahead and move forward," he told me. THAT'S where my attention should be. The past must be dead to me, silenced at the guillotine, and I must refuse to look over my shoulders as I figure out a path to walk and set out on it.