The ambiguous conundrum of living your dream

Occasionally, when I go back to my home town or talk to a friend I haven't seen in a while, someone will comment on how I look like I'm living my best life. They've seen my Instagram photos, seen all the places in London I've been, all the social occasions. I will interject to tell them that I'm only posting the highlights (I've written about that before), that life isn't always G&Ts at cool bars. They know that but still, I'm living in my favourite city and having fun, right? "You're living your dream!" they tell me.

And there I pause, baffled, because my experience of living my dream is far less glamourous than they're imagining.

Let me set the scene: it's Wednesday after work. I'm sitting in my small bedroom in Highbury, wearing joggers and a baggy hoodie. I should really be out for a run, but it's raining so instead I'm sitting on my bed in my, quite frankly, abominably messy room, sipping a cup of tea and resembling some sort of sloth-woman hybrid. And before you tell me that everyone does that on a weekday, I was doing almost exactly the same thing on Friday night...

Not exactly the inspiring, exciting, shiny London life I had imagined, in my long-ago daydreams. And it makes me wonder, as I look at those I consider to be tracking way ahead of me, the ones who truly do seem to be living their dreams - what is life actually like on the other side?

I think we all get a bit of life-envy. The whole grass-is-greener situation. I sigh wistfully over the lives of those who get to travel around the world (for work or pleasure), another day another cool photo of some far-off city that I can only dream of visiting. I gaze with longing at the people who are out and about with their jobs, dashing this place and that, getting wined and dined by clients, or attending exclusive parties, while I sit at my desk and debate whether or not I should go to the vending machine at 4pm when the snacks are 20% off.

But for the ones who have started their own business, or run a marathon, or bought a house, or have kids, it probably doesn't feel as fabulous as it looks on the outside. There's the old saying that talent is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration and I think that is probably what living your dream is actually like. It's the daily grind, the monotony that no one sees. People see the infrequent highs but they don't see you in the trenches. The plugging away well into the nights. The lack of sleep. The scrimping and saving. The hoping and praying. The struggle.

There's a song in The Greatest Showman that really resonates with me.

'Cause every night I lie in bed, the brightest colours fill my head, a million dreams are keeping me awake'.

I'm that person who has a million dreams. Too many to ever realistically achieve them all (or perhaps, not the talent to achieve them all. I'll sadly never be a Tony award-winning musical actress). And it makes me wonder, what happens to the person with that one dream? Do they just enjoy it forever, feeling completely satisfied in life? Do they escalate the dream to the next level? Do they have to find a new dream? Do they feel empty after the initial bliss wears off? Have a minor breakdown because they don't know what to do next? Whatever it is, I want to know.

And then there are those who are still dreaming. Those of us who are slowly working away at something that seems so far away. Maybe there are some of us who are too afraid to try, because being within a fingertips grasp of the dream but not getting it is somehow worse than never having it at all. Or there's the underlying societal pressure of ACHIEVE, DO, BE SOMETHING that makes us feel unworthy. That we'll never be good enough to get there, or we're not doing enough to get there. Or even that our dreams are too small. You want to work in a bakery? Stop being so small-minded, you can do so much more! You can own a bakery. Wait, you don't want to own a bakery? You should want to own a bakery! Own TEN bakeries! Open a bakery chain in every town in England, you loser!

Surely, I think, there must to be more to life than the constant dream-chasing.

Maybe that's the whole point of it. You can't really be 'living your best life' because really, what does that actually mean? Does it mean living in an elevated state of happiness, because you've got what you were hoping for? Does it take into account the days you feel like rubbish? Is it black-and-white? Are you either living your dream or not? I think living your dream is simply...living. It's the journey, the road along the way with its highs and lows and all that's in between. And, sure, it's good to want things for your future and to work hard to get there. But you have to be careful not to live too much in the future, in the fantasy of your dream. That you'll be working or wishing so hard to get to there that you'll miss the life that's in front of you - it's all so fleeting.

Maybe one day you'll look back at where you are and say, oh, maybe THAT was the dream after all.