Desire, Doubt, Dreams

“Focus more on your desire than on your doubt, and the dream will take care of itself.”  ~Mark Twain

I can’t begin to tell you how many times I’ve doubted myself.  I doubted if I would ever recover from all the physical challenges I have faced.  I doubted I’d ever reach goals I had set.  I doubted if I should set any goals at all. 

I doubted if I’d ever find that next line to finish a poem I was working on.  I doubted if I would ever pick up my guitar again or lift a paint brush to finish a painting I started.  I doubted if I could keep my friends and family dear to me.

I doubted if I would ever write a book.

The control doubt had on me limited my everything.  It took control of who I was and closed the windows covering them with black curtains, taking away the sight of my desires. 

I lived in doubt, it became my footsteps.

But more than anything, I desired to be healthy again.  I wanted to work again, be part of something that made a difference.  I desired a happy and healthy relationship, one of support and real love.  I wept for my desire to have the woman I was to be back in my arms.  I missed my desire to write down every dream I dared to dream. 

But one day I woke up and realized that I was allowing doubt into my life.  I was letting it snuff out my desires, and let it pop my dreams like a balloon. 

My doubt was trying to take my attention away from the milestones of recovery I had made.  It stopped me from seeing I could recover and enjoy a marvelous life.  Here is where I learned that I had to put control within myself, rather than allow the doubt to control me.  Here is where I revived my desires, I began to dream, and I embraced myself with the peace of who I am and I understand now, that I am my dream-maker.

I still have doubts, but I now understand they are necessary to clarify that the desires I have are the right ones to take me to my dreams.  Doubt once limited me, it limited my ideas, and it limited me to take chances.  If my dream derails somehow, well, back to the drawing board I go, stronger because of what I learned.  Stronger because my focus is on my desire to reach my dream.

My goals have returned, I finished my poem, I picked up my guitar and my brush began to paint my desires and dreams.  A new desire appeared, to see the world through a camera using my heart as the focus.  A dream I live every day.

My dream of writing a book came true.  

I’ll always have doubt, but now, rather than let it limit me, I allow it to help me take a chance.