The Permission to Dream

Why letting yourself dream is the first – and hardest – step toward the life you were made for.

For most of my life, I considered myself responsible.

Not in the way adults casually describe a dependable kid. I mean responsible in the way that changes how you move through the world. Responsible in the way that makes you hyperaware of costs, consequences and burdens before you've even learned how to be carefree.

I was dependable, reliable, practical. The kind of child who rarely asked for much and learned early how harsh reality could be.

When I was young, getting a new Littlest Pet Shop toy brought me so much joy. They were five dollars, but I was aware of how even five dollars could add up over time. My mom was raising my sister and me on her own, and I never wanted to add pressure where I could avoid it. So I learned to want less.

I attended free after-school programs. Free science camps. I took free cello lessons for ten years. Whenever possible, I chose the option that cost my family the least.

I remember one of my third grade teachers calling a meeting with my mom to discuss the amount of pressure I put on myself. It was something that impacted me across all areas of life, not just at home, and something several adults in my life noticed. I remember my mom coming home from that meeting and talking to me about it, asking if there was anything she could do to ease that feeling I had. There wasn't.

At twelve, I began helping my mother with her taxes. I was often the one saying, "We have McDonald's at home," whenever my mom or sister suggested stopping there on the way home after a long day.

I wasn't told to think this way. I simply believed it was my job.

Around that same time, I started earning money by walking younger children home from the elementary school near my middle school and waiting with them until their parents got home from work. I wanted a car one day, and I knew if I were to buy one by the time I was sixteen, I needed to start saving now.

When I wanted new clothes, a backpack or eventually a phone, I assumed it was my responsibility to pay for it. I didn't get a cell phone until high school because I couldn't afford one before then.

Every dollar I made went into savings or toward something I needed. Practical things. Never anything trivial. Never anything unnecessary.

At thirteen, I got my first official job working housekeeping at a bed and breakfast for $9 an hour. It was gross. I hated it.

The following summer I worked in dining services at a nursing home. I cleaned urine-soaked chairs after residents on the good days, and got food thrown at me on the bad ones. Later, I spent three years working at a coffee shop throughout high school while balancing sports, orchestra, academics and extracurriculars.

By sixteen, I had saved enough money to buy my first car: a 2002 stick-shift Honda Civic.

I was so proud of myself.

That car represented something much larger than transportation. It represented self-sufficiency. Independence. Proof that if I worked hard enough and kept a solid plan, I could take care of myself.

High school came and went – packed with activities, leadership, sport after sport, all building toward one goal: college.

I applied strategically, choosing schools that could offer substantial scholarships and financial aid packages, and finally landed at Occidental College. After four years, I graduated without paying a dollar in tuition. In fact, I received a refund check – around $1,000 – every semester that helped cover books, flights and other necessities.

Throughout college, I worked multiple jobs. I became captain of my volleyball team. I served as a resident adviser. I joined clubs and even co-founded one of my own.

I did what I had always done. I worked, I achieved, I carried responsibility well. But somewhere along the way, I realized there was something missing. The carefree hope for the future that some of my peers carried felt foreign.

For all my discipline, I lacked vision. For all my responsibility, I lacked direction. For all my reliability, I lacked a dream.

For all my discipline, I lacked vision.

For all my responsibility, I lacked direction.

For all my reliability, I lacked a dream.

The Cost of Carrying It All

Here's what I didn't see until recently: all of that responsibility, all of that self-containment and reliability was a weight I put on myself that no one asked me to carry. I thought it was the most helpful thing I could do for the people I loved. Maybe it was, in some ways. But it also meant I became a child who did not let herself play. Or dream. Not in the way children are supposed to.

I remember the feeling that rose up from my gut every so often – you are meant for so much more than you can even imagine. And quickly stuffing it back down, silently warning myself I'd better not get too ahead of myself, I should be careful to never dream too big.

My childhood "dream" was to become a veterinarian. Stable, logical, respectable. I'd help animals. I held onto that for years not because it set my heart on fire, but because anything more was too much of a risk.

And so I kept it realistic for a long time. Within reach, inside the box, never outside the lines of my own expectations.

Not because I lacked ability or intelligence or ambition. But because the fear of disappointment, of failure and instability was louder than the desire to even try.

Fear convinced me to keep my dreams small. And for years, I mistook that restraint for wisdom.

Life Beyond the Box

Then I moved to Los Angeles. I met artists, entrepreneurs, musicians, founders, athletes and creators who were actively pursuing dreams that once would have sounded impossible to me.

This city has a way of holding up a mirror. Being here, watching people around me actively pursue and achieve things they once only imagined forced me to confront a painful truth I had been avoiding: I had limited myself. I never gave myself permission to dream in the first place. 

To dream is to have a clear vision of where you're going –  what steps to take, how to order them, what to move toward and what to move away from. A dream is a blueprint; it gives you a path. It gives purpose a shape. And walking in purpose is not the same as chasing something reckless or unrealistic. It's the opposite. It means you know who you are, who you're becoming and who God intends you to be – for yourself, for the people you love and for the world.

To dream is not to be frivolous. It's to answer the calling that has been placed on your heart.

To dream is not to be frivolous.

It's to answer the calling that has been placed on your heart.

Permission Granted

I've learned – slowly, and not without resistance – that no dream is too big. If you can envision it, embody it and move toward it with consistency, it can become your reality. The key is to not give up. To not let the voice of doubt, especially the doubt born out of where you came from, convince you that where you started is where you have to stay.

There is real power in responsibility. There is dignity in reliability, in restraint, in knowing how to hold yourself together when life demands it. I'm not here to dismiss any of that. Those qualities made me who I am.

But there is also something sacred in the unknown. In faith. In a dream that is bigger than your current circumstances can contain. I've come to believe that dreaming is one of the most faithful things we can do. And both can be true at once.

So I'm asking myself now – is there such a thing as dreaming too big? Or is that just fear talking? The fear of disappointment, of loss, of wanting something and not getting it dressed up as wisdom.

Hope can be terrifying. But a life lived without dreaming carries its own cost; the sense that something inside of you is waiting to be awakened.

So instead, I choose to face the fear now, to take the leap, to ask the questions even when I know the answers are still being written.

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