“My life looks nothing like I thought it would at 30!” – I’ve said these dramatic words too many times since last August, to pretty much anyone who will listen.
It isn’t that I think I’d squandered my twenties. I appreciate that I’ve worked hard, loved and been loved well, and healed in a thousand ways. But there’s something about these conventional decade-wise timelines that can send you into an existential crisis. And I had neither hit the milestones my peers did nor the ones I was working towards reaching when I entered this new decade.
I’m not sure what response I’ve expected when sharing this with people. Perhaps some reassurance or validation? But most folks have (rightfully) given me a brief pause in return, a moment of silence, part-empathy-part-sympathy.
All of this changed in early March, while I was visiting a friend in Mumbai. I once again launched into a dirge of my tattered hopes and dreams. Except this time, I was the one who had to pause.
How odd, I wondered, wasn’t sitting here, traveling around the country to be with my people, a dream too? Why wasn’t I counting this? Were there other dreams I was fulfilling and not paying attention to?
There was a crackling around the edges of my despair. Turns out I was onto something.
In the next couple of weeks, I uncovered what my angst kept hidden until then – I was already living many of my dreams and fulfilling others on a regular basis (?!). How weird, how wonderful, how absolutely necessary that I end my dream series with this little miracle!
So in this last edition, I want to talk about the few types of unidentified fulfilled dreams (UFDs, if you’d like) floating about in my life that I’ve made notes of. Chances are, you will have these in your life too. And if so, being able to identify them will draw you a map of the things you did right, a self-delivered esteem boost, fuel to drive your larger dreams.
Tell me then, how many of these UFDs can you spot?
UFD 1: Dreams you thought were rewards.
As an Indian who grew up in Kuwait, I’ve always longed for a home that I could someday fully belong to – a country, a city, to call my own. I thought the rite of passage would be getting married, having kids in the city, learning the local language, and other such things. But 13 years in Bangalore and I know that I don’t need any of those to call a place home, just time, memories, and a smidgen of audacity.
It’s easy to assume that some things happen once we accomplish our Big Dreams. That belonging, good love, and worthiness will arrive once we’ve worked hard to earn it, crossed milestones, accomplished other dreams. In fact, sometimes these appear massive and hazy, so vague that we don’t even realize what their form is. But our lives have an excellent tendency to fit themselves within these seemingly formeless dreams anyway. Often, we fulfill these core dreams (read needs) before all else.
UFD 2: Oddly specific images you didn't realize were dreams.
In my late teens, I had a close friend who had a melancholic pull to the beach. He’d text me from some shore or the other well into the night, waxing lyrical about what it was like to sit contemplative or brokenhearted by the sea. While reading his texts, I’d picture it wistfully. Being a young girl or living in a land-locked space rendered these images as just that for me – static images.
But a few months ago, when I finally got to sit by the sea at midnight, mildly contemplative but mostly way too excited, I realized that this too was a dream I’d unknowingly carried for so many years.
These mental images we hold may seem random – you at a beach post midnight, all seaspray and romantic music. At dinner with a stranger in an unknown city. The perfect shade of red lipstick and sandy brown highlights. Starstruck by the city lights that you so freely glide home to each evening.
But these aren’t random. This heady mix of mundane and pertinent is a moment you built. These are the contents of your dream life, what happens after the more-noted highs of various accomplishments. This is what it looks like to live the dream, or at least, a dream. So notice them, soak them in.
UFD 3: Dreams that are so much a part of your reality that you don’t remember when things were different.
When I was younger, somewhere between 16 and 21, I’d hurl over in searing pain nearly every day, sick of chasing boys who didn’t know how to see me. I’d weep in prayer, wishing for something to fundamentally change about who I was so that I could never chase people again.
Every now and then, I remember that girl and her inner landscape, all steep cliffs, jagged edges, and horror weather. I thank her for the unflinching ferocity with which she cried, prayed, and dreamt. Amidst all her pain, she imagined my form into existence. And then she sculpted herself until I arose, a woman entirely incapable of chase.
There are these dreams too, right? Sometimes we envision being people so different, leading lives so incongruent from the realities we know. We dream to choose ourselves reflexively, to be averse to chaos, to grow whole, to spend all our free hours subsumed by art, to walk into creative spaces like we belong. And when we do get there, it’s almost natural to let go of the humans we once were, an unfitting load we’ve lugged for so long.
But I think that every once in a while, it’s good to remember too. To thank our inner children, to report back to them, to feel proud of exactly why and how we’ve become the people we are.
UFD 4: Smaller dreams you forgot you had.
If you’ve read my zine Things I Voicenote Myself About, you may know how I struggled with my mental health while trying to gain footing at the start of my twenties. When I finally started to earn, I was overwhelmingly grateful for stability. Unlike my peers, I didn’t dream of big hikes, fancy clients, and early retirement. In fact, there were times I took massive pay cuts to look after my mind and preserve my sanity.
Aligning myself this way has come with its share of sacrifices, including rarely being able to travel in my twenties. Fortunately, I’ve had friends who flew in from different parts of the country and world to visit me each year. Someday, I’d tell myself, I’ll do the same for our friendship too.
Since my finances and the freelance nature of my work finally permit me, I decided to spend this year visiting my friends scattered across India. And so I come back to this dream and others like it – the smaller ones.
Traveling with purpose, catching your favourite musician on tour, rewriting terrible experiences you’ve had somewhere with better ones, earning what a self you once were considered ample and admirable – all dreams worth clocking. These dreams don't always announce their arrival. But if you look closely, you will see their nature of everyday triumph constantly bringing your stories full-circle.
UFD 5: Dreams that are a cross between wishes and intentions.
In case you are new to this newsletter, I’m one of those people whose life changed drastically during the pandemic. One of the biggest external changes was my social landscape – I went in a wickedly loved 27-year-old and came out an isolated, lonely 30-year-old.
Sometime last year, I knew I’d have to work on rebuilding a social circle, in many ways, I’d have to create a life from scratch. At the time, I thought of this as less of a dream and more of a basic necessity.
But when I started getting used to social spaces, finding community, making new friends, and reconnecting with some old ones, I realized there was something so dream-like about the whole affair.
You see, some dreams are birthed in spaces where our needs and visions intersect. These dreams are never really ‘fulfilled’, but remain ongoing. What I love about them is that there is no climb, we can dip our feet in its waters whenever we want to. The only task is to keep aligning ourselves towards it, remembering where our streams are found.
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Of course, these categories aren’t exhaustive or mutually exclusive. But I wanted to share them with you because for me, they’ve been grand indicators of life's riches.
How terribly easy it is to only look at our big goals or conventional milestones and deem our lives unsatisfactory. But I keep reminding myself that without being able to embrace the small celebrations, we’ll block our own paths in frustration. In this way, we neither truly live nor make it to our bigger dreams.
So today, please give yourself a pat or five on the back. Set your eyes towards abundance, in which you’ve already swam, in which you will find yourself over and over again.
This, my dream for us. 🤍
💌
Love,
Soumya
Spot the UFD 🔎
Each of the dreams I've mentioned above can be spotted by tracing back a particular feeling. Below, I’ve shared a guide that has helped me map my own UFDs. Yours may vary, since no two people’s emotional makeup is the same. But I hope the overall sentiment helps you identify sneaky dreams when you next see them. Don’t forget to tell someone when you spot it, this makes it more real!
UFD 1 ~ A feeling of amusement when you notice “It’s strange that I got ZYX before I became/accomplished ABC.”
UFD 2 ~ A feeling of Deja Vu that’s not quite Deja Vu — not a moment you’ve lived but one you were sure you someday would.
UFD 3 ~ A feeling of mild shock when you register how differently you used to feel/think/live at some point in your life. Often followed by feeling tenderness towards a younger self.
UFD 4 ~ A surprising feeling of pride/victory when you do something that you never deemed vision board material, but hoped would happen along the way.
UFD 5 ~ A ‘this feels so right, can it even be true?’ feeling. A ‘I can’t believe I was able to know I needed this’ feeling.
Jam 🎵
I've been obsessed with Pune-based Easy Wanderlings ever since I caught them at Echoes of the Earth last year. This is my favorite track, and the perfect one to end this series with methinks. ☁️ 💕
Thank you for reading! 💞
This email is Part 3 of a 3-part series on dreams. If you enjoyed it, you can read Part 1 and Part 2 here. To support me, you could also:
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Saumya, I loved reading this. Gave me a new perspective. Would love to meet you offline sometime when I come to Bengaluru.