GREAT EXPECTATIONS

I had this dream in my head during the months leading up to my freshman year at Calvin College. I envisioned myself getting up in the early morning hours and swimming laps in the school pool. I would be in that pool before dawn, before the world got busy. The intent of this regimen was to keep me healthy and embrace a fun way to exercise.
Of course, once I got to Calvin I stared at that big, imposing field house and didn't dare step foot in that swimming pool, let alone go there before dawn. (Just think how imposing that new building must be now to new students!) One afternoon I finally got up the nerve to take a swim and I found out that I hated lap swimming. So, there went that dream.
A few years later I was supposed to be doing aerobic exercises a few days a week to supplement my PE class and I thought I would put swimming into the mix with my jogging. It worked out for a couple of weeks to lap swim once or twice a week in the afternoon, but it soon got to be too time consuming and distracting of an activity. I found myself having to pack extra clothes and towel before heading off to class, showering when I got home from swimming, and then consuming tons of food to rejuvenate myself after the exhaustion of swimming. I will admit that swimming is a wonderful aerobic workout. But, I couldn't spend half my afternoon dealing with swimming and its side-effects.
I tried to keep up the dream, but it just wasn't meant to be. Professor van Dijk actually lives the dream. She swims several days a week before coming in to school. Kathy lived the dream sometimes. I would come home in the afternoons to find her showering off the chlorine.
What is the point of this story? Why do I dwell on such a silly and meaningless dream? Because it is an example for me to learn from for other areas of my life. I have already confessed that I am an official daydreamer. I use daydreams to imagine what amazing things could be in store for me in my future activities. But, this experience with the pool and swimming really taught me that my dreams are just dreams and life will never be as wonderful and perfect as I wish it could be. I want to make starry-eyed plans for my life, but I know that most of my ideas are not conducive to what I really enjoy or am capable of doing. The difficulty is sorting out the bad ideas from the good ideas without having the opportunity to try them all out. And since I can't try them all out, I attempt to daydream my way through various experiences in order to see what ideas really appeal to me and what ideas I find appalling. It's mental role-playing. It seems like most of the time I just end up disappointed because none of my ideas work out in my daydreams. But I keep trying. Life keeps offering me new paths to play around with.