When You Give Up Your Dream for Security

I met Janet on vacation when I was about 7 years old.

Janet was bold.  

Janet was brilliant.  

Janet was confident. 

Janet was creative.

And Janet loved theater.

Janet and I were friends all through middle and high school.  We saw each other each summer.  We visited each other at home during the year.  We wrote letters every week.

So all through high school I got to witness Janet's love of theater.  She was always involved in a play at school or in her community.  Sometimes she was on the stage and a lot of the time she was behind it or in the front of the house.  But she was always involved.  And she was always excited.  She lit up when she talked about her current production.

I could not wait to hear all of the details because it was always so exciting!  I can still picture the pages and pages of letter talking about the play she was working on.  Or the pictures she included of all the great people she was working with.  Or her hands gesturing wildly when she was trying to describe a certain dramatic scene or hilarious backstage fiasco.

I should also note that no matter how much schoolwork she had to maintain her straight A's, she always found time for the theater.  

So when it came time to apply for college, Janet did exactly what I expected she would do.  

She applied to a top school to prepare to be a doctor.

It was expected because working in theater was not the secure job that we were all expected to get.  It was just a dream.  

We had been taught to believe that dreams had no place in a secure future.

But the Universe gave Janet a second chance.  She got mono the summer before college and had to defer her admissions.  And for a year she worked in theater.  I visited her a few times and I have to admit, I was more than a little jealous.!  I was in school learning about engineering and she was living her dream.  She was working at a theater, up until all hours of the night, trotting around the city for props and costumes, living with a bunch of actors.  She just bubbled over with excitement about what she was doing and learning.  She was full of such energy that she practically glowed when you looked at her.   I can still picture her today, telling me about what she was going to be doing that weekend at the the theater with her hair a wild mess and a fire in her eyes, her gestures huge, leaning towards me with a huge smile on her face.

A year later she was at her top notch school studying to become a doctor.
All of the light had left her.
She was cold and gray and bored and a little angry.
I can still picture her.  Hair pulled back severely.  Lips tight.  Quiet.  Preoccupied.
We drifted apart.

We have seen each other a few times over the past 20 years and she is a doctor at a very prestigious practice.  She makes a lot of money.  Important people want her to be their doctor.   She has a big apartment at a good address.  She is secure.

But without her dream, Janet is lifeless and pale.
And each time I see her I feel such sadness that she had such a great passion and she turned her back on that dream for the colorless life that she has now.
I don't even think that Janet remembers that she had a dream.

It serves as a reminder to me, every day, to help myself and my kids find a way to feel secure while never giving up our dreams.
To never trade passion for security.