If you’ve ever had so many dreams that it feels impossible to catch them all at once, you’ll understand this.

I’ve been a dreamer for as long as I can remember, immersing myself in these elaborate, well orchestrated visions of a life that always seemed to leave me feeling like I was flying.

Funny enough, it wasn’t always anything adrenaline inducing.

Sometimes it was the dream of walking the streets of a small city in France, wandering over cobblestones and in and out of little local shops. Feeling the fresh breeze against my skin, flowers brushing past me, surrounded by greenery and beautiful architecture. A slower kind of life. A life curated around contentment and joy.

Something about the cobblestones always stayed with me.

Then there’s the dream of living in a bustling city. A concrete jungle where I can marvel at the creations of mankind. How we can build something massive from an idea that once existed only in someone’s mind. How dreams can materialize into breathtaking reality.

I want to be a small piece of something that makes a massive impact.

I want to be connected to people. To live somewhere where there is room for authenticity to be celebrated, encouraged, and fully expressed.

Then there are the dreams of beautiful tropical islands, cozy rural homes, land, quiet, and peace.

And the dreams don’t stop at places I want to experience. They extend into the ways I want to show up in this world.

I’ve dreamed of being a scientist since I was young. The way this planet fascinates me, the way this universe is so intricately put together, sometimes makes it feel almost wrong not to study it all.

And then there’s the pull toward the mind. Toward human nature. Toward the vastness that exists within us and the endless possibilities of exploring it.

All of this to say: we are much more complex than we realize.

Maybe this isn’t always indecisiveness.

Maybe sometimes it’s simply the experience of taking it all in.

Being able to see so much beauty and feel genuine awe toward life itself is a gift. It’s a gift no one really tells us is a gift.

Those of us who hold so much potential for joy and passion can sometimes be overly empathetic, in my experience. We absorb. We notice. We connect.

We may be accused of being chameleons, of being fake because we can connect with so many different kinds of people. But perhaps what looks like shapeshifting from the outside is sometimes just the ability to recognize something familiar in almost everyone.

And strangely enough, that can make you lonely.

Because when you can meet so many people where they are, it can sometimes feel like only bits and pieces of you are ever being seen in return.

There is something deeply fulfilling about standing beside another person and seeing them for everything they are.

Perhaps because you’ve always been aware of your own vastness.

Every dream is telling a story about us.

It’s a piece of us speaking about what it is, what it needs, what it desires. A dream can become a roadmap to who we are, or at the very least, give us more things to adore about ourselves.

So maybe it isn’t about choosing.

What if you didn’t have to commit to one piece of yourself for the rest of your life?

What if the scientist in you doesn’t have to disappear because the writer found something beautiful to say?

What if the woman who wants a quiet home surrounded by land is still the same woman who wants to walk through a crowded city and marvel at everything humanity has built?

What if you simply followed the most joyous thing at every turn?

Maybe you don’t have to know where every dream is taking you.

Maybe you just have to listen closely enough to recognize what each one is trying to show you.

I think that might be part of what makes us human.

Not our ability to choose one thing and become it completely.

But our strange, beautiful capacity to contain multitudes.

To want.

To wonder.

To become.

And to keep discovering that there was always more of us there than we knew.

~Cy