By Paulina Lawsin Nayra

Everyone has a dream. We dreamed big when we were younger, only to witness those dreams gets smaller as we experience the tough reality of chasing them. The cliché to make them happen is to visualize our Dream. Focus on it. Think Positive. Pray hard. Have faith in ourselves and our capabilities. All of these are true and necessary. All of them work for those who keep the faith. No Ifs and Buts. Until we get married, establish our own family and the children start coming one after the other.

Imbued with new inspiration and reasons for being, we work hard at equipping ourselves to take broader responsibilities. We took postgraduate courses and became masters at getting things done at work and at home. An opportunity for promotion, a better job assignment and pay package inevitably comes along. Then we pause and start thinking, “Should I accept this new challenge? How can I take care of my children and manage my home? How will this affect my relationship with my spouse?”

Our culture expects us to sideline our careers and prioritize taking care of the family. Having enjoyed equal opportunity to education and equally qualified to climb the bureaucratic or corporate ladder, those of us who dreamed of becoming a top executive, decline any promotion that will require   us to be assigned away from our families. Those who persist and are driven by their dreams become vulnerable to psychological abuse from the jealous spouse who expects them to take care of the home and the family while bringing home the bacon. Most of us chose to pass up the promotion and become the super managers of the office, the home, the family and our relationships to keep the peace at home.

Did you think that the dreams died and drowned in our multiple burdened lives? I don’t think so.

 Our dreams are like ghosts that randomly appear in our conversations with ourselves. They resurrect when we feel down and gets awakened when we are happy. They become agenda that we intend to take up when the children are grown up; when I fully pay my mortgage, when I retire. They are promises we keep to ourselves. They serve a purpose – to keep us going and believing that one day we will finally have the courage to assert our right to realize our dreams and only to learn later that our loved ones understand us all along.

Let’s be kind to ourselves. Let’s take that most important step to make our dreams come true. Share those dreams  with our loved ones. Now.

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