Dare To Dream
Last year, I started working with families with school-aged kids, and I was struck by how quickly our society shuts down imagination.
Movies aren’t real. The characters you invented are lies. The secret language you created with your siblings is confusing.
We forget that skyscrapers, subways, and smartphones all began as someone’s “unrealistic” idea. We forget that our culture depends on fantasy before it becomes fact, yet we shame kids and train them out of dreaming before they’re even 10.
It reminded me of my own childhood. I once wrote an essay about my dream life:
Waking up to birdsong.
Being friend with trees and grass.
Playing with friends by a river at sunset.
Living in a world that felt soft, free, and alive.
To me, it was beautiful. To the adults around me, it was dangerous.
My teacher tore the essay into pieces. My mother was called into school. Together, they tried to talk me out of such nonsense.
“Other kids want to be scientists, lawyers, governors,” they said. “How are you going to make a living? Be more realistic.”
I couldn’t put my instinct into words back then. I just lowered my head in shame.
Like many Asian children, I learned to trade imagination for safety. The dreamer in me was replaced by a version of myself designed to make others feel comfortable: Get the degree. Get the job. Get the salary. Play it safe.
And yet, something inside me never stopped aching.
∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙
Years later, on the shores of O’ahu Hawai’i, I watched a little girl sit on the front of her father’s longboard.
She asked, “Can we find a mermaid?”
He smiled and said, “I’ve never seen one. But maybe you will. What would she look like?”
Her eyes lit up. She imagined different versions of mermaid in vivid detail – wild, colorful, magical.
In that moment, my inner child felt cherished: This father wasn’t just entertaining a fantasy. He was sending a message I had never received:
“It’s okay to dream.”
“It’s okay to believe in things that aren’t there yet.”
“It’s okay to imagine something bigger than what others call ‘realistic.’”
He didn’t crush his daughter’s wonder. He let it expand.
∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙
As a psychotherapist, I see clearly now: the core energy of my childhood dream wasn’t childish at all.
It was my soul’s yearning disguised in a child’s language:
A longing for freedom, joy, community, and harmony with the earth.
That’s who I am. And that dream was never silly. It was sacred.
I now meet people every day who were told to stop dreaming.
They’re now adults – living a stable life, "successful" on the outside – yet carrying chronic stress, anxiety, and a sense of disconnection and emptiness.
And I ask them:
Whose version of reality are you living?
Did abandoning your dream actually give you more peace, freedom, or joy?
Or did it just make you forget who you are?
Here’s the truth no one told us:
Dreams don’t die when we ignore them.
They get buried. And when they’re buried too long, they come back as anxiety, fatigue, sleepless nights, or a dull ache in your chest that you can’t explain.
So before you dismiss your wildest dream as “silly,” pause and ask yourself:
What dream still flickers quietly in the background of your life?
What did it really represent? What's the core energy?
From whom are you hiding that dream to stay safe?
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