I’ve had some dreams for a while that I’ve been afraid to write down and to share. I’m afraid that naming them collapses my range of potential futures. I’m afraid that it’s too direct and intimate, that people would be scared off, disgusted, even annoyed, especially people that it could involve. It’s very much far from the current reality. I’m afraid that it would lead to disconnection. I’m afraid of being attacked, for being missed/misunderstood in them. “Haven’t you given up on this yet?” I’m afraid of the impact of revealing where my attention is really focused.
I do feel more comfortable now simply naming dreams, not being attached to them, and being clear that there are many other possible dreams for me to pursue. Usually being clear and specific about wishes helps make them happen. I’m skeptical that that would happen here, the situations are pretty complex, but at a minimum it might help other people see me and my longings more clearly, or even help me find others with shared longings.
So I have some longings. They mostly revolve around doing stuff and being with the homies.
Middle School Homies
I want to spend lots of time with my friends that I’ve been close to since middle school, or even elementary school. We were in an academically gifted program together for many years, and have all been affected by that upbringing. I want us to work through our struggles related to that experience together. To me, I’ve struggled with stuff like achievement, competition, self worth, etc. I want us to celebrate what was beautiful about it and feel the love and appreciation we have for each other. I want us to share that work with other high achieving people with struggles, and to inspire improvements in the system we grew up in. And I want to work in a way that’s purposeful, rewarding, pleasurable, delightful, enjoyable and generally stress free for all of us.
We would be perfect candidates for offering that kind of service, if we worked through it ourselves. I’m the lowest achieving person in this group by far at this point. We’d have cred. We’d have the lived experience to share from. We could start in our hometown with the academic program we were in. We’d have great vibes and psychological safety and emotional capacity. It could be quite impactful - shifting the societal landscape by shifting the inner worlds of those with power, with the most leverage (or those that eventually will). We’d be a delightful group to work within and with. We’re all in pretty decent positions financially so there wouldn’t be a ton of external pressure. If/when we had conflicts, we could lean into trusting the strength of multi decade loving friendships. We’d deepening our relationships with people we cherish, especially if everyone oriented towards it as a “primary job”. We’d build towards our own Okinawan Moai.
Quite far away from this dream as far as I can tell. My high achieving friends are currently still busy achieving. Most of them seem limited-ly interested in the stuff. Many of them have other major/primary commitments like partners, homes, families, etc. We’ve got plenty to work through, within ourselves and between us too.
But damn it’d be pretty sick to work with the homies on stuff that matters to us and from a place of ease.
College Homies
I want to spend lots of time with my homies from university. We were all in the same fraternity together, and have all been affected by that experience. I want us to work through our struggles together, particularly ones related to that time. For me, I trace challenges to that time like relationships with women, relying on each other, living in the same house, etc. I want to celebrate how good the times were, and feel the love and appreciation that I remember for each other. I want to collectively embody, among other things, a really beautiful masculinity in which we support and challenge each other, where we build each other up, show up for each other, trust ourselves and each other. I want to direct our energy back into our fraternity. We’re alumni, we have a say in how it goes, we could join the board of directors. I want to pipe this kind of masculinity into our undergrads, to show them and even work with them towards a version of themselves/ourselves that we’re really proud of. I essentially ran a 5 day men’s retreat for a dozen undergrads in our fraternity last year that went well. I want to potentially expand the work in the American Greek system, and maybe slowly start chipping away at what I perceive as a broader crisis of masculinity. I want to do it together. I want to do it in a way that’s meaningful, purposeful, rewarding, enjoyable, and easeful for all of us.
It’d be great. We’d be excellent candidates. We’d have done the work ourselves, we’d embody it, we’d be natural people to share it. It could be so good. We could continue honoring our time together in a way that felt purposeful rather than reminiscent. It could be quite impactful. We’d continue to have a blast together and with a lot more range of what we could hold and be with, with each other. We’re all in pretty decent positions financially so there wouldn’t be a ton of external pressure. If/when we had conflicts, we could lean into trusting the strength of decade+ loving friendships. We’d be deepening our relationships with people we cherish, especially if everyone oriented towards it as a “primary job”. We’d get the gang back together, we’d find ways through this collective “we want to be together more but somehow it’s so hard” that we occasionally name, usually at weddings. We build towards our own Okinawan Moai.
This dream is far away. None of them are particularly interested in this stuff. They all have other major/primary commitments like jobs, partners, homes, families, etc. We’ve got issues, relationally. There are major rifts between us, many of which trace back to college. We’ve accumulated more layers of stuff and groups and complexity since college. I’ve got sins to atone for, beatings that I deserve, trust to rebuild, accountability to take. I imagine most of us do. But damn I’d be honored to do so with this group of men. And to imagine not just reliving but improving on the glory days, where we’re not just tight but collaborating, supporting, building, etc. It would be beautiful.
Family Homies
This one feels the most daring. I don’t even know if I want it. It’s too scary to really imagine right now tbh. It feels furthest away, I have the least clarity what it could possibly look like. It feels much truer to say that I don’t know.
But I can start with this - I want to have a deeper, more loving and supportive relationship with the people in my extended family. I want to be more embedded in it, a full contributing member of the family. Our family is already good at being together, logistically. I want to see if it can be a more loving and rich experience, subjectively, at least for me.
I want to see how deep this family rabbit hole goes, how deep it cuts. Are my relationships to my extended family closer to my relationship with my parents or to friends I see once a year for a month? Only one way to find out. Maybe the reality is we’re closer to chill homies, in which case maybe there’s nothing deeper that I want. But maybe we are deeply, undeniably spiritually connected, and these relationships matter more than any other ones.
In which case, I want to experience, embody, live, be immersed in family love. To constantly experience how beautiful it is to be connected with my people, to belong deeply, to love and support freely, to have each other’s backs no matter what. To love and experience reverence in every moment. And I want us to share it with others, to help other families feel that with each other too. We could, in experiencing the divinity of our loving family, help others touch the divinity of theirs. To really embody the Confucian values that permeate our lives and culture.
It’s hard to imagine what this could look like. Even in my wildest dreams I don’t imagine all of my family members being super excited about this. But even if a few of us wanted to share our growth together, to be able to share multiple generations of experience and perspective with people seeking to improve their family relationships I imagine would be invaluable. To be able to share the embodiment.
It’s honestly too hard to really imagine right now. There’s too many people, it’s too hazy, I have no idea how we’d work together. I’m still scared to collaborate with my mom in the kitchen let alone something like this lmao, let alone with others in the family I haven’t meaningfully tried to do something with.
And God knows if it’s even possible to get to step one. Our family is loving and beautiful in lots of ways, but I’ve also grown up in the US. I don’t know what all is on the underside. I don’t know if I’ll even be let in, I’m often still on the outside. I don’t even speak the language that well. There’s so much I don’t know that I can’t really even enumerate what I don’t know. Right now our family is a normal Asian family. What I’m writing feels hard for me to grasp myself, let alone people in the family, such is our distance from this dream. There’s so many cultural barriers, things that wouldn't even make sense about what I’m writing for most of the people in my family. Maybe in a decade, if I’ve successfully invested in and cultivated my family relationships, something like this could be more imaginable.
But there’s a beautiful dream in here somewhere.
These are some of my dreams that I haven’t enumerated before, but it feels good to share them. To be honest, I’ve been fairly concretely attempting to navigate in these directions for years now, so it feels good to own, be up front and clear about them.
If my actions the last several years have seemed strange to you, perhaps it could help to know that often I was fumbling in the dark for actions that might take me marginally towards these dreams.
Very satisfying to pump this out in an hour and change. Dialed in, guess I’m on a bit of a roll right now.
Thanks for reading, I’d love to hear responses.