The Curse of the Dreamer: A Personal Post on Wandering, Owls and Restoring Hope

Sometimes I walk for hours. One foot in front of the other. No destination.

I’m wandering. Wondering. Paying attention.

I’m looking for signs. I’m feeling into the world around me.

I’m hoping for the kind of hope that will keep mine flowing.

Sometimes tears come. Sometimes rage. Sometimes desperation.

I keep walking. One foot in front of the other.

Sometimes I walk through the forest or along the ocean. But those are usually times when I’m looking for peace, not hope. I go to nature when I want to be held; when I’m aching for reprieve from the busyness of the world. Not when I’m looking for hope.

Nature is eternally hopeful and full of magic, but I know I won’t see it when my faith in humanity has left me feeling heartbroken and undeserving.

So, when the darkness of our systems and our consumerism and our greed and our violence and our hate weighs me down and my shadow begins to whisper “there’s no hope” “just give up” “its not worth it”, I tie up my laces and walk right smack in the middle of the city.

When I feel myself reaching the brink of despair, I turn to face the busy streets where concrete reigns and I walk and I walk and I walk until I see the magic that still exists, there.

I walk until I retrieve my lost hope from the place that stole it from me. I demand my hope be restored from the very things that took it from me. In that way I can still believe it exists, here.

Most often, its owls I look for. I’ll walk block after block keeping an eye out. Hoping against hope. Sometimes pleading or bargaining for a sign. Just when I’ve given up, I’ll round a corner, and I’ll see her. Beady eyes staring up at me from a blue and yellow sticker on the corner of a shop window. The “Provident Security” logo. I know its only paper and glue stuck to glass, yet relief floods me. It gives me hope.

In a residential neighbourhood, sometimes I’ll get a streak. A barn owl perched on a wrought iron pole scaring the crows from a garden, a wise horned owl wind-chime, a decorative snow globe housing a snowy owl on a windowsill, a majestic wingspan painted on the side of a brick wall.

I feel the weight lift from my heart. I skip a step. I smile. It helps me to carry on with all of it. I have hope.

It may seem silly to you. My looking for signs. My wandering ways. It may seem absurd, or even insane.

How can a walk in a random neighbourhood and a trinket in a stranger’s yard lift my spirits and help me to keep having faith?

I don’t really know, other than its something I’ve chosen to believe in. Something I allow to make a difference for me. Something that I give my faith to when my faith in everything else has left me.

There’s no magic in it until I believe, and because I do, the magic is there.

I have to believe in something.

We all do.

I choose owls and long walks and writing. And if you took those away, I would choose something else. That is how I maintain my faith when my fear of the human shadow threatens to take over.

Can we trust that love will win? Can we trust that we are going somewhere? Can we trust that we are evolving? Are we really on the brink of a revolution that has the possibility of transforming everything for the better? Is there really a more beautiful world? Will we ever get there?

Is there any reason to have faith that human consciousness and free will are good things?

The curse of being a dreamer by day is darkness sleeps in my bed. The paradox of humanity is not lost on me. The weight of that responsibility may very well bring us to our end.

Yet most days I believe. I see – I FEEL – the deeper thread.

There is wisdom in Life. There is wisdom in Death.

We don’t get to control how this goes, but, moment to moment, we do get a say, and we do get to choose. Will we show up to the conversation a believer, placing one foot in front of the other? Or, will we deny ourselves our own magic, shut the closet door, and simply tell the world we’ve put away our shoes.

The reality is, either way its you who gets to choose, and the consequences of that choice are considerable.

Choose wisely.

Xo,

Danielle