Is Naming Created or the Creator?

Cancer. Celebration. Hope. Dreams. Desire. Grooming. Need to be. Above. Male. Female. Honesty. Sticking it out. Adventure.

The dying of my dreams has been a slow cancer eating away. I used to want to be a veterinarian. I think I was told as a child that I could never be one because I had severe allergies. The death of a dream because of a medical condition or because of the words of another? But don't all kids want to be veterinarians? And if all the kids who want to be veterinarians actually became veterinarians, wouldn't we have a gross overpopulation of veterinarians in this world?

I drop my crumbs on the desk and sweep them to the floor to be lost in a sea of sage and avocado carpet. A fleeting thought of the person who will have to clean up after me?

I also wanted to play bass, like Mike Herrera from MxPx. I figured the bass would be an easier instrument to play, plus I wouldn't be the focal point on stage like the lead singer or the lead guitarist. These thoughts as a 6th grader. Why have I yet to play bass? Simply put, it's too hard. What if I failed? What if I couldn't play as well as someone else can? It's easier to kill a dream than suffer the pain of failure. Or is it?

Where else have I wanted to play it safe? Do I even want to go there?

At one time in my life I wanted to be a missionary in Africa. Many thought it to be a great idea, many thought it a greatly stupid idea. AIDS. Ebola. War. Genocide. It's a hard life there, you have to eat strange foods, and it's hot. It would have been a hard life, tough to raise a family overseas. Too hard. Out of Africa. Never in Africa.

More crumbs lost to the sea.

I wanted to be a youth pastor. Wow. One dream finally realized. But was it? Was it what I expected it to be? Was it what I wanted it to be? Was it...nevermind.

It was... hard, painful, mildly rewarding, greatly rewarding, greatly frustrating, fulfilling and never filled. Just like I like my donuts. As a youth pastor (the pain associated with that term...), or sometime whereabouts, under the pressure to be whatever I was expected to be, under the pressure to perform, under under under I chose to be over. Removed. Outside. Doesn't cut it, I was above. I was above, but was this really a new thing for me? Certainly not, certainly it was. Not thinking, not considering, not dreaming. Above it. So easy. So painful. Old familiar friend.

My desire for an easy life with an easy job and a pain-free existence was not fruitioning. Fruition, damn it, fruition! It was rotten, my dreams thrown out. Who is to blame? Who is not to blame? "Certainly not I" was my cry as I watched my dream die, says the poet. Could I be a poet? Who'd know it?

It was I. Is this who I was groomed to be? A hater of adventure and a lover of comfort? Who was I groomed to be? Who was I needed to be? I loved adventure at one time, and to a degree still do. Isn't this an adventure? Of sorts. I am not longer king. I once ruled a kingdom of trees, spiders, snakes, dirt and bugs. Rocks, mud, steel tracks, ditches and frogs. Even there I was brought into submission. Adventure no more. Do I still want to be an adventurer?

I'm done.