25 Questions for 25
I’ve reached the quarter life milestone and this morning when I woke, I felt the anxiety flooding over me. So strange how nothing has really changed but once this arbitrary-ish guidepost has been passed, my mind went into overdrive of an “uh oh.” Is this what 25 feels like? Here’s all the things I want accomplished and done, Miss Pang. Funny how the mind works, isn’t it. Especially when I have birthday habit of feeling optimistic and grateful for the things to come. A battle began to ensue: you’re supposed to feel x not y or z. But if it’s anything the past year has taught me is that I don’t actually allow myself to feel the full extent of my emotions—suppressing feelings or thoughts… and rationalizing it thoroughly through a form of process vulnerability as opposed to actual vulnerability. So, this is 25 and the slight rawness of these feelings. Anticipation, anxiety, apprehension, and then avidness for affection or achievement. Pretty much sums it all up doesn’t it?
At this point, that sinking feeling has quelled enough to the point I can focus on writing this up. But rather than running away from it, I’ll be allowing myself to feel it all. Hard but habit formation begins with trying. Here we go!
This year keeping with the tradition of writing a birthday blog, I decided to ask 25 people in my life a question: what’s something you’ve dreamed of doing for a long time? Why haven’t you done it?
From close friends, colleagues, mentors, and family members, I got a range of responses. And I’m so grateful and honoured how all of them took the time to reflect and feel trusting enough to share with me. Some things are best to be shared and others, are best to be kept secret in the midst of the initial context. So honouring those wonderful conversations, I won’t be paraphrasing what has been shared here perse, but sharing perhaps the common threads or themes. And then reflecting myself, on what those conversations have helped me reflect upon.
The blog will be structured as follows: 1) key takeaway for me 2) common themes of friend and family responses 3) my answer!
The keyword here is: interpretation. I was under the assumption that most responses would be future oriented in the sense that respondents would share things that they would want to do down the line but at this current point of time, have been unable to do so. But I love the variedness of interpretation with this question. Some friends responded with dreams that were incredibly important to them at a certain point in their life but no longer anymore and their “why” response was focused more on what changed and why that dream is no longer something they still dream about or strive for. The second assumption that got dispelled for me is that we think of dreams as these big grand milestones or gestures or moments. And some friends’ responses were actually more about habits or things they wanted to see more of in their daily life. The key takeaway of this “exercise” was so much more fun than I thought. Given the unexpectedness of some responses and how different the interpretation of the question than I had initially thought, I was all in all just so fortunate to be able to have these conversations and get to hear more about these dreams—in all their variations and nuances.
I found three common themes of responses!
The first was centered on self-exploration and growth such as through trying new experiences or through travelling to better chase one’s inner curiosity and childhood aspirations. The “why” varied in its specificities as to why respondents hadn’t yet tried these new experiences or challenged themselves out of their own comfort zones. For some, it was simply due to timing and circumstances. Working, family, and other priorities came as precedent. For others, it was simply due to the amount of effort or resources needed to be able to pursue those opportunities to grow or to do something different. But for many, the common thread was the daily grind and narrowing trajectory of pursuing a career that made travelling or longer self-discovery journeys harder to come by.
The second was centered on pursuing a specific goal such as opening a business based on a hobby that means a lot to the person but isn’t necessarily tied to their profession. Or the specific goal was about becoming a certain type of person working in a particular profession. This category of responses, which was very specific and clearly thought out by respondents were either future oriented or past oriented. Some hope to pursue these very specific goals down the line when they have more time, energy, and resources to do so. And much like previous respondents in the first category, most respondents’ abilities to pursue their specific dreams were limited to the time constraints from developing their careers or earning an income. For past oriented responses, I thought it was so touching and humbling to learn more about my friends’ past dreams and get to know a different side to them. That is, for many of them, their “why” response became an unfolding of how they got to where they are now or who they are now that may have been very different from what they had hoped for themselves or ascribed to when they were much younger.
The third was centered on daily habits or lifestyle changes. This category of responses was a lot smaller than the previous two. But still incredibly impactful! Respondents shared how they wanted to enact certain behaviours, make different daily decisions, or form new habits. The dream wasn’t necessarily a certain “result” perse or “finite goal,” that could be achieved or attained but more so a disciplined effort or repetition of actions. Again, similar to the above two categories, the “why” was due to energy, time, and timing. Timing in the sense that priorities currently lie elsewhere but respondents had beliefs that priorities would shift down the line and that these dreams or dream would be more attainable imminently.
Well, well. What do we have here? Mine falls into the second category of responses. Ha, was that a surprise? Probably not! One day, when I’m retired or have more time to build/ run a side hustle again, I would love to have a artsy book store and café (maybe in the South of France? Or somewhere else that would challenge me culturally to speak a different language, etc). Essentially, I’d want it to be a multipurpose use space that honours the local community and fosters community building as well as lifting up local artists by being a safe space for them to express and discover their artistic voice and power. So there’s that. Some of my friends want to open their own coffee or ice cream shops, so hey? It’s me and let’s keep in touch and perhaps, work on fulfilling those dreams one day, together 😊
The main thing that this exercise did for me was that I realized there are some fears I still have to work through! To dive into this a bit more, in some ways, I’ve aimed to apprehensively skirt the blurry boundaries of love—to prevent myself from free falling because what if love sweeps me away from my dreams and ambitions? So as much as I hope this blog you do a little reflection. I also hope that it provides a different perspective on dreams and what’s holding you back.
What’s something you’ve always dreamed of doing, but haven’t yet…why?
*also random psa, go watch past lives!
