Hope vs. Dreams

I'm starting to find myself and my posts very repetitive. I'm not sure if they come across this way - but I'm so stuck (in a good way) in this new found freedom to dream that I hope I can find new ways to communicate its significance.

Today I am thinking about how opening yourself up to dreams really does introduce the vulnerability of what happens when such dreams do not pan out. At my weakest points the fear of such failure has shut down my dream mechanism all together. Now, as it gears back up, it sometimes goes into imagination overdrive and I think I expose myself to more disappointment than a situation calls for. Of course when I say "situation" what I really mean is "love" because as much as I'm trying to figure out the rest of my life - love is the piece that's absolutely the most fun to dwell on when something stirs it up and gets me excited.

So when I find a person who intrigues me, or have a flirtatious interaction, I start to construct a story of resolution from that moment on about how this person could be the one. There's no limit to my imagination or the details that ensue. Like so many things in my life (be it work or creative pursuits) that have laid stagnant for a long time, as things awaken I yearn to dwell on romance and the possibilities of what could be. For the most part when things don't pan out I don't lose any sleep - unless of course I've invested a bit of my heart into it, which I've only done a few times in the past year, with little success.

And herein lies what I'm trying to figure out - what is the distance between hopes and dreams in the game of love? Are either easier to let go of or recover from when they fail to evolve as we wish? How much of my romantic energy is being spent on hopes vs. dreams? And should it be directed towards one over the other? If I had to identify the differences I'd say hopes are more basic and short term - bits and pieces of an image we have. But dreams run deep, dreams are born of the fibers of your being - in love they represent the image that may have started with the men you love the most in your life - your father, your brothers, uncles etc. They grew with your first exposure to men in a romantic sense (when they were still boys) and you started to understand the significance of chemical attraction and reaction. They grew further when you first fell in love, and with each subsequent relationship where you learned what you could and couldn't live with, and what at your core makes your heart feel most at home. And at that moment where you let your dreams take over, you start to let your heart get involved, and when things don't pan out - it's much harder to shake off.

I think right now I'm still focused mostly on hopes with love. I haven't built up the same resilience that I have in the rest of life that's letting me take bold steps forward to pursue my dreams. In love I am still dabbling in the hope that I'll understand the significance of my dreams and who I want my partner to be. In the meantime, I suppose my focus is best served figuring out who I am and will be for whoever may be in store for me, and may be pondering these very same things on his own...