What ever happened to.....

Childhood dreams? Whatever happened to childhood beliefs? I've been thinking about this lately because of my sick cat. Stay with me here, there's a connection....

When I was little, I LOVED animals. I loved loved loved them, I couldn't get enough of them. I remember one of my favorite gifts I ever got as a child was a set of national geographic animal fact cards. The pack had hundreds and hundreds of cards. The cards had pictures of animals on them and then gave interesting facts about the animal. I looked at those cards over and over....except for the insect ones....I threw them away....

I used to spend time at the veterinarian's office every other week. It started out as an assignment for school, but turned into something that I just liked to do. I wanted to be a vet for most of my childhood, even up until the time I was a sophomore in high school, it was what I planned to do, it was a dream of mine.....

I remember having arguments with my mom about whether or not animals had feelings or could think. I thought that they did, she assured me that they didn't. I fought her and fought her until eventually, as I grew in "maturity" I learned to agree that animals don't have feelings and that they were just animals.

I've been spending a lot of time at the vet's office lately....not b/c I have fleas, but b/c my little kitten Karuka has been sick. Spending all that time around a job that I always wanted has reminded me of my childhood love, and makes me wonder what was it about life that allowed me to push down that passion and move on to something more "reasonable?"

You know when you ask a child what they want to be when they grow up? They answer a policeman or a doctor, and we think, "Oh how sweet" but in the back of our minds we're thinking, "That'll never happen!" But why not? People say we need to be realistic with our kids, tell them the truth, let them know that it is likely that they will never be president of the united states, or an astronaut. I think this is wrong. Be realistic with your kids about what is real, actions and consequences, right and wrong, deceit and truth, but don't be realistic with your kids about their dreams. Dreams allow for hope to flourish. Reality can kill hope, there are so many terrible things in this world that ti does not take long for hope to be deminished.

I think children have a right to dwell on their passions to attempt to live out their dreams. It's true, they might grow up one day and find that what they had alwasy wanted is unobtainable, but at least theyknow they were able to explore that dream on their own and live it out until they were the ones who stated that it just isn't realisitc.

Now I'm not saying that my parents squashed my dreams of becoming a vet, this isn't an, "I blame mom and dad for the way I turned out," moment. They were very encouraging and supportive of what I wanted to do when I grew up.....but the world around me told me that it was something that wasn't important, and a waste of time. The world told me they were just animals, they don't have feelings or hurt. Eventually I was talked out of my dream based on absurdity. And now, sometimes I regret not following through. Sometimes I sit around wondering, what ever happened to those dreams? Whatever happend to those beliefs I held to so tightly as a child....and were they beliefs and dreams that I should have never let go of?