Epilogue

Dreaming Again and Again

In writing this book, I dared to dream. Through this nine-month process of organizing my ideas, writing because I have something to say, bringing together a Dare to Dream team of women who likewise have something to say, I’m finding my voice and I’m becoming the hero of my story.

As I complete this manuscript, I’m being invited to dream again. Two days ago, Dana King (see chapter 13) shared a link with me to an open casting call for a Mark Burnett–produced reality TV show in which the prize is your own talk show.

Dana’s words to me: “I dare you.”

My thoughts: I want to go to this audition. I’m scared. I shouldn’t do it. It’s impractical. I’ll have to fill out a lengthy application, stay a day over in New York, and wake up well before dawn. I’ll likely get my feelings hurt. For a long shot! But, when I shared this idea with my childhood friend Liz Economy, she declared, “What have you got to lose?” Liz was polite enough not to have said, “Walk your talk.”

And she’s right. So I’ve decided, yes, I’m going to suit up, and show up at the casting call. Will my application even get reviewed? They only look at the first five hundred. If my application does get a viewing, will they like me? Will I make the first cut? I don’t know. All are outcomes I can’t control. If I don’t get to audition, maybe I’ll make a video. If I do, but I get cut, I’ll be sad. My feelings may even be hurt. But I’ll recover, and I’ll know that I took on my dream to create a platform from which I can invest not only in stocks, but also in people, concepts, and dreams. And because dreaming is a process, when I dream—when you dream—we are invited to dream again.

DREAMING IN STAGES

How this process unfolds is different for each one of us. For some, our dreams center on the professional track. For many women in early adulthood, the dream of being an at-home mother takes priority, while other dreams are deferred or done part-time. As we discover our way to making our dreams happen, when we trust ourselves, our intuition, we’ll know which dream to pursue, as well as when and how. That has been the case with Margaret Woolley Busse, a Harvard-trained MBA who someday hopes to run for political office, but has taken a leave from full-time employment in order to be at home with her young children.

Margaret Woolley Busse: 100% Wool

“And you’ll have root beer in your drinking fountains!”

Dreams start in funny ways. I was in the second grade listening to the speeches of would-be student body presidents, each one wanting our vote. (Although as a lowly second-grader, I couldn’t vote!) And here was this guy, promising that if elected, he would apparently defy the principal, parents, and probably the plumbing by getting our favorite soft drink to stream out of fountains.

I didn’t buy it. I understood at that moment how the game of politics works. Get votes by offering potentially impossible but tantalizing promises. I suppose it was a loss of innocence, of sorts. To my relief as a disenfranchised second-grader, the root beer–pusher didn’t win.

Skeptical as I was, I was also enamored by the idea of democracy—that people can affect government by electing leaders who reflect their values and beliefs, and can even become those elected leaders. In high school I ran for senior class president. Given that my last name was “Woolley,” I used “Don’t Vote for a Polyester Politician, Vote 100% Wool” as a campaign slogan. Corny, I know, but the theme resonated with me. I didn’t want to be a root beer–pusher.

But the trouble remains. Whether it’s candidates for grammar school president or for the U.S. Senate, the formula for winning is usually the same: promulgate clever, yet often meaningless, campaign slogans and offer slick speeches with sticky-sweet, root beer–drinking-fountain promises. Of course, when elected officials don’t deliver on those promises, we become cynical, and cynicism can lead to something even worse: apathy.

I didn’t become apathetic. I was passionate about the idea of policymaking. I loved economics and found political philosophy fascinating. But I did become cynical about elected officials, so I aspired instead to be a high-level appointed official—secretary of state, perhaps? Yet, as I progressed through college and professional workdom, it became more apparent to me that without having a long, concentrated, full-time career (not to mention high-level connections, brains, and luck), becoming secretary of state might be a little unrealistic. I knew I wanted to marry, have children, and take care of them. I also observed that elected officials had more varied backgrounds than your average cabinet member. And I am nothing if not pragmatic.

Still, I didn’t know if I could stomach going the elected route—the campaigning, the negotiating, the wheeling and dealing. I didn’t want to be “polyester.” Yet a few experiences in college helped me clarify my own strengths: I managed a campaign for a friend running for student body president and discovered that not only was I good at campaigning, I loved it. Later, I found my time in a mock legislative assembly exhilarating as I negotiated with others and won support for the “bill” I was advocating. After experience, reflection, and plain old time, my dream re-crystallized: elected office.

Fast forward through a few academic degrees, real-world employment, and marriage, and here I am, living in Suburbia, USA, with four tiny kids that I care for on a full-time basis. The choices that led me here have been very deliberate, and made without regret. I’m looking forward to the day when I can run for public office, but during this intense period of motherhood, the time is not right. And I’m not prepared. Still, between all the diaper changes, meal-making, and exuberance of little children (my joy!), I’m preparing. I’ve pounded the pavement for issues I really care about—with children in tow. I started a blog where I can articulate (to myself, if no one else) my thoughts about policy and politics. I write letters to the editor of my local newspaper. I read. I vote. I listen to my neighbors. I serve on my town’s planning board. These activities are not just means to an end, however. At the root of my desire to serve in public office is my deep interest in understanding and improving government, along with my personal delight in building community and interacting with people and hearing their ideas.

And yet, with all this desiring and doing, I’m surprised by how much I fear my dream. I strive to be that “100% Wool” person of my high school ideals, but I see the pressure on elected officials to compromise their integrity, offering up the adult equivalent of sticky-sweet root beer. I also know that fulfilling this dream means making it a reality, and reality rarely reflects our glossy conjurations. Still, when the time is right, I will dare to do it. And that’s its own variety of 100% Wool.

It isn’t simple. Life isn’t a breeze as we dream. As Margaret Woolley Busse wrote, “reality rarely reflects our glossy conjurations.” But there is happiness, hope smiling before us, as we claim a central place in their lives or, as Julie Berry (julieberrrybooks.com), the author of the young adult novels The Amaranth Enchantment and Secondhand Charm, describes, as we “embrace round.”

Julie Berry: Embracing Round

In fiction, we’re fascinated by characters who, like real people, are flawed, unpredictable, conflicted, self-deceived, smart yet irrational, courageous yet fragile, prudent yet occasionally reckless, irresponsible yet sometimes noble, righteous yet privately naughty. Books I love best confront and embrace their characters’ roundness. The author’s empathy for, amusement at, and delight in the little cast of loonies shines through on every page.

When my friend Kimberly Carlile posed the question, “Are we flat characters or round?” During a salon-style discussion about the transformative power of literature, I realized something about myself that I hadn’t articulated until I put it in the language of literary character.

I occupy many roles—wife, mother, author, marketing director, choir director, neighbor, friend, daughter, citizen, and so on. But what character do I play as I occupy these roles? Is it an honest one?

In my town I often portray The Frazzled Mother of Four Rambunctious Boys. This is scarcely an artistic stretch. I’ve spent years polishing my performance. The community is happy to place me there. I get a lot of, “Four? All yours? God bless you!” as if I’d sneezed my sons into being.

The problem starts when I adopt this character consciously, hamming up my performance, so to speak. Egocentric Me is stroked by the positive attention (“Four boys! How do you do it?”). Lazy Me believes less will be expected of me in this role (“Tardy again, Mrs. Berry? Oh, that’s all right.”). I wear my drama’s character as a sandwich board, a preemptive excuse for the chaos in my life. If Frazzled Mother of Four Boys is what you think of me, you’ll, perhaps, overlook my messy house, filthy car, late paperwork, missing school snacks, forgotten trumpets, unanswered messages, etc.

Except, and here’s the kicker, what you’ll actually think of me is entirely independent of this little charade I play in my head and, furthermore, who cares what you think? This performance is staged by my ego, for my ego. It’s narcissistic at its core, caring nothing for those to whom I owe honesty, friendliness, or punctual permission slips.

And it’s a lie. I’m bigger and better than I let on. I’m defrauding you when I play this game. The fact is, I can manage my life better, when I choose to. The truth is, I’m making choices other than to be a better manager of all my duties. Some of those choices may be worthy, and some may not. The more I play roles to con you, stroke my ego, and appease my anxieties, the less I am looking at you, thinking about you, getting to know you, or learning to serve you.

Flat roles are invidious weeds that choke the honesty out of relationships. I’ve got to keep Nervous Maiden and Insecure Wifey out of the bedroom, because they sap my marriage of its potential, and focus its resources on my needs, instead of his or ours. I must keep Super Busy Young Mom out of my relationship with my own mother, lest I deprive her of the attention she deserves at this more isolated stage of her life. I’ve got to banish Well Intentioned But Forgetful from my friendships. Above all else, I must, must, must keep Overstressed Mother of a Herd of Hooligans out of my relationship with my sons, or heaven help them all.

Possibly the worst deception wrought by adopting shallow roles is that I, myself, come to believe in them, to accept the definitions and limitations that I’ve so long projected to others. This form of “losing myself” carries no prize for virtuous self-sacrifice, but only leaves me stuck and starved, pretending and powerless.

What then? Will my round bumps, my glaring self-delusions, run away with the story of my life? Am I casting myself as a supporting character, a pawn in my own existence?

This very defect is one of my psychic curves—this manipulative, self-deceptive streak of mine. I’m emotionally rotund, and convinced I can fool others into believing I’m flat.

And that, if nothing else, makes me funny.

(Round, flat . . . couldn’t I be svelte? Is that so much to ask?)

As I write and revise the novel of my own existence, how shall I view my unruly protagonist? I can choose contempt, despair, and torn, abandoned pages. Or I can wink and nod next time I catch her pulling her shenanigans, give her a stern lecture, perhaps, and ultimately paint my heroine with empathy, amusement, and delight.

As we make the decision to dream, we are taking our lives on fully, and embracing round. We can’t be flat, in part because we are being ourselves, but also because heroes aren’t flat. They are real, and their lives are complex and full. If our lives are full, we are happy.

My favorite song in Macy Robison’s recital Children Will Listen is “The Story Goes On” from the musical Baby. The lyrics give utterance to the raw joy I felt as I welcomed children into my world, and I think these poetic words apply to dreaming as well.

THE STORY GOES ON

So this is the tale my mother told me

That tale that was much too dull to hold me

And this is the surge and the rush she said would show

Our story goes on.

Oh, I was young

I forgot that things outlive me.

My goal was the kick that life would give me

And now, like a joke,

something moves to let me know

our story goes on.

And all these things I feel and more,

my mother’s mother felt, and hers before

A chain of life begun upon the shore of some dark sea

has reached to me.

And now I can see the chain extending

My child is next in a line that has no ending

And here am I full of life

that her child will feel when I’m long gone

And thus it is

our story goes on.

—Richard Maltby, Jr.

It is my sincerest hope that a chain of dreaming begins with this book and that, many years hence, you and I will marvel at how dreaming mattered to ourselves, our families, and the world. Because we dreamed, the story—our story—goes on.

What one thing, one small thing, will you do to dream today?