up!

I took the short people of the household to see the movie Up during the September school holidays. It was better than I expected (I'm not a big Disney fan), but there was one particular scene that made me catch my breath. 

We follow the main character through his life: shy boy meets bossy tomboy girl, they become friends, eventually get married, buy rundown house and renovate it together, dream about babies, discover they can't have babies, but manage to get past it and have a nice happy life together in the nice renovated house with the picket fence while the world changes around them. There's a thread throughout their lives that starts from their very first meeting: a shared dream to visit a particular significant location. When they move into their house as a young couple, they set up a jar to save for this trip, and as we skip forward in time, we see the jar start to fill with coins, and then empty for medical expenses, fill again, and empty for house repairs, and on it goes. They never quite get there, and the dream is pushed aside for more immediate concerns. Eventually the woman becomes sick and is hospitalised, and then dies.

It's what a lot of people do. It's certainly what I've done. I had lots of dreams, and now I find myself trying to recapture that giddy anticipation - the potential of what is to come - while the day to day reality of suburbia constantly wears me down. Some days I can't even remember what it was I wanted so badly, and some days it seems impossible, and that scares me.

Following on from yesterday, I think one of my lists is going to be a dream list, to remind me just what it is I'm heading for, even if some days it seems impossibly out of reach. And instead of saying "Why?", I'm going to say "Why not?"