In Short:
How to keep our dreams going
Why I’m in the US
Photos from my trip
Read Time: 5 Minutes
"The only thing worse than starting something and failing... is not starting something."
Seth Godin.
Intro
This week’s newsletter is written under the welcoming glint of Manhattan’s towering skyscrapers.
Ah, New York!
It’s been years since I arrived to cover an election splintered between the megalomaniac dreams of a billionaire and the desperate efforts of a dynastic American family to enshrine its legacy.
Trump vs Clinton.
Who could forget?
But I’m not here for politics.
Right now, I want to talk about dreams.
On the flight over, I started reading Patrick Bet-David’s “Your Next Five Moves.”
In the first chapter, he writes:
“We all have big dreams growing up, and we make a lot of plans for ourselves. Then life gets in the way, the plans don’t work out the way we thought they would, and we lose faith in our ability to focus on who we want to be.”
New York wrenches out the dreamer in you.
It says, here’s mine; where’s yours?
It wants to encourage you but to do so, it provokes, upturns, and challenges:
What dream did you put aside?
Are you living the life you aspired to live?
Have you lost contact with a potential you know still to be in you?
This week’s newsletter explores the dreams we’ve set aside and what we can do to reconnect with them.
"At the centre of your being, you have the answer; you know who you are and what you want."
Lao Tzu
The Question New York Asks
When it comes to our dreams, many of us are in one of three camps.
1) We had a dream but let it go
2) We have a dream but just can’t quite get to it
3) We’re living some version of the dream but have lost the fire
What I love about New York is that it speaks straight.
Not just its people but its countenance.
If you want to get into its spirit, you must first get straight about the questions it asks.
Are you living the life you aspired to live?
If not, why not?
Really, why not?
You don’t want to answer.
You scowl back at it.
Can’t I just be awhile?
But in the hustle and bustle, the questions don’t downlift; they uplift.
Damn, what’s that?
Your heart pounds, provoked.
What seemed impossible yesterday finds no answers before these magnificent towers.
All that is potential in your stirs.
But something stifles it.
Too often, yesterday’s glum mood defines what we do today.
A realisation strikes you.
How damn fickle dreams are.
And the question clarifies itself:
Why is what you were dreaming five years ago tormenting you today?
Counterpunching New York Tough
The sky is an azure blue symphony.
I sip on my coffee, enjoying a short rest.
I’ve stomped 15 km through the city and will hit 30 by the end of the day.
Up above, the iron-beamed towers peer down, observing us ants crawling its capillary streets.
Spring overcomes the concrete at every turn, and the blossoms are at fever pitch; a perfection of pink.
It’s a wonderful time to be here.
I’m feeling happy.
But it’s taken some work to get to it.
“New York tough.”
It’s not about how the people speak.
It’s the internal conversation it provokes.
I laugh at myself.
I came here, of all places, for a little space.
Chasing your dream is a lifelong task.
And reality is a blunt object.
But sometimes, what works for us is what works for us.
To let go of the world, I have to take in the world.
That’s how I’m designed.
For me, New York is a blood transfusion.
I give it some of my dreams and take in some of its own.
Then I query it.
New York, you’re so in love with your dream that you fail to notice its realisation.
Yes, if you want to get tough with me, you’re going to need to exchange with me too.
You inspire me.
But I will not get sucker punched by your illusions.
I’ve learnt a thing or two along the way, too.
I’m alive in your mania.
But not deceived by it.
“I’m not telling you to make the world better I’m just telling you to live in it. Not just to endure it, not just to suffer it, not just to pass through it, but to live in it. To look at it. To take chances. To make your own work and take pride in it."
—Joan Didion
Better a Mangled Dream than a Mangled Soul.
My victory over myself is that I’ve developed the capacity to notice.
Against the odds, I have managed to continue chasing my mangled dream.
Yes, there’s nothing I am more proud of than how mangled it is.
Why?
Because a dream, by its very nature, forms perfectly.
We think of it as something precious.
Yet it's more instructive to think of it as a timeline.
Because if you are foolhardy enough to go after it, it will mangle you, and you will mangle it.
In fact, by the time you’ve achieved some version of it, you will be nearly unrecognisable from the version of yourself that first dreamt it.
But that’s the whole point.
You don’t pursue a dream to stay the same.
It’s about who you become on the journey.
The real reward is the knowledge gained along the way.
It follows:
If the goal of a lifetime is to become who you are, can you achieve it divorced from your own dream?
Better to create a mangled dream than live with a mangled soul.
"There are three things extremely hard: steel, a diamond, and to know one's self."
Benjamin Franklin
A Butcher’s Shop in Philadelphia
So, life’s getting in the way of your dream.
So what?
Why are we so damn afraid of mangled stuff anyway?
God, it’s easy to be in love with the easy dream.
Maybe that’s why so many of us give it up.
I’d rather keep it precious, thanks.
Go after it, and you’re going to have to butcher it.
Yeah, that’ll do.
I want butcher dreams.
I set off down to Philadelphia.
As a Rocky fan, it’s a pilgrimage.
I visit the Italian market.
Go into the butcher’s shop where they shoot the famous scene.
Banter with the owner:
“Yeah, I remember the last time Sylvester was here. I never flushed the toilet since he pissed in it!” he says.
“Bottle it, and I’m buying!” I quip back.
Skipping through the streets, I’m thinking about why we love Rocky.
First, it’s a love story.
Second, it speaks to our relationship with our opponents.
Your opponent is your dream.
It will challenge you, pound for pound.
And surviving it is what forms you anew.
The trouble is, we want to create our legacy in one fight.
But a legacy isn’t created overnight.
And it isn’t taken away overnight, either.
That’s why we love Rocky.
Fall, rise, fall.
Rise.
But keep on getting up.
And keep on punching.
Along the way, you start noticing something.
Society is obsessed with winning.
But it respects whose lived through the losses.
So, if you’re feeling beat down, maybe you’re not in the worst part of your story.
But in its transformation chapter.
You, me, or nobody is going to hit as hard as life. But it's not about how hard you hit. It's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward.
Rocky
The Heart of Your Story
When we are low, we are tormented by our dreams.
Who we are.
And who we are not.
What we have done.
And what we never did.
But none of this really matters.
You are in the heart of your story.
If blood is still beating in your veins, it is not done for you yet.
Walking through the streets of New York and then Philadelphia, I realised I was in the heart of my story.
It began with a dialogue among the skyscrapers about the essence of dreams.
And ended in a butcher’s shop thinking about the flesh we pound to realise them.
I’m on the bus back to New York now.
There are several hours to go till I disembark in Manhattan.
I remember why I’m here.
Tomorrow, I enter a studio in the East Village to record a new song with The Stroke’s producer Gordon Raphael.
Afterwards, he’ll join me as a guest on my Podcast.
Twenty years ago, I dreamt about recording in New York.
And about starting a podcast, too, for that matter.
To get here, I took some punches.
Punches that mangled my heart.
But kept it pumping.
Dreams.
Not something you leave in yesterday.
Not something you save for tomorrow.
But something you live today.
The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.
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