In Between Dreams

Another day, another five-hour flight..

This has been a pretty interesting year. I’ve somehow traveled from the West Coast to the East Coast six times already. At this point, five-hour flights are starting to feel strangely normal lol. I should not be getting used to this haha

There’s something about sitting on a plane for hours that makes you think about things you probably wouldn’t otherwise.

I was chatting with one of my close friends – or wait, let’s call her my “breathtakingly phenomenal friend” – and our conversation somehow got me thinking about a train.

Not an actual train. But about Life.

Life is a train

Imagine that your life is a train.

It’s your train.

You’re moving somewhere, even when you don’t completely know where yet.

Along the way, you stop at different stations and people get on.

Some stay for a station or two.

Some stay for years.

Some disappear much sooner than you expected.

And if you’re really lucky, maybe a few stay for most of the journey.

The weird thing is that you never really know which kind of passenger someone is when they first get on.

Someone you thought would stay forever might suddenly leave.

Someone you expected to know for a few months might still be sitting beside you years later.

That’s just life.

People are complicated

One thing I’ve realized over the past few years is how differently some people respond when things don’t go exactly right.

You can do ten good things for someone.

Be there for them. Show up. Care. Make memories. Try your best.

And sometimes one thing goes wrong – and suddenly it feels like those ten things never happened.

That’s a strange feeling.

It can make you start thinking that maybe you need to be more careful.

Maybe you need to say everything perfectly.

Maybe you need to make sure you never disappoint them.

Maybe if you make one wrong move, they’ll leave?

But I don’t think that’s how the people closest to us should make us feel.

You shouldn’t have to constantly prove that you’re worthy of having a seat in someone’s life.

And similarly, someone shouldn’t have to be perfect to have a seat in yours.

We’re human.

We’re going to mess things up sometimes. And that… is okay!

Some people leave. And that’s okay.

Not everyone who gets on your train is supposed to reach the destination with you.

Some people come into your life, you have a great time together, and then eventually your paths separate.

Life goes on.

But then there are those few people who are different.

They leave a mark.

Even after they’ve left, their seat somehow doesn’t immediately feel empty. It’s still filled with memories and what not, sometimes even a version of yourself that existed because they were there.

Those marks take a little longer.

And I think that’s okay too.

Not everything meaningful has to last forever to have been meaningful.

But it’s still your train

This might be the most important thing I’ve realized.

Don’t confuse a passenger with the destination.

People will get on.

People will get off.

You can’t control all of that.

You can’t force someone to stay on your train, and you probably shouldn’t want to.

What you can control is where your train is going.

You decide what kind of life you’re trying to build.

You decide who you make room for.

You decide what you carry with you and what you eventually leave behind.

And when someone gets off, no matter how important they were, your train doesn’t suddenly stop existing.

It keeps moving.

So whenever life feels overwhelming – or you find yourself anxious about a person, a relationship, or whether everything is going according to plan – remember that.

It’s still your train. And that is important!

Even I forget this from time to time lol

So where are you taking it?

And this is where another idea I’ve been thinking about lately fits in:

Manifestation.

I know. You can be like – why is this guy even bringing this up all of a sudden??

But hear me out.

If your life is the train, manifestation isn’t about controlling who gets on or magically making things happen.

It’s about deciding where you want the train to go.

You have to be able to imagine a destination before you can start moving toward it.

And the first person who has to believe that destination exists?

You.

That’s probably the hardest part.

Because believing in something when it’s already working is easy.

Believing when there’s very little evidence that it’ll work?

That’s different.

But then something interesting happens.

You find one person who believes in it too.

Maybe a friend.

Maybe a partner.

Maybe someone who’s just crazy enough to look at this destination nobody else can see yet and say:

“Yeah. I can see it too.”

And suddenly there are two people believing.

Then maybe three.

Then ten.

And belief starts multiplying.

Ideas become plans.

Plans become actions.

Actions become something real.

It’s almost exponential.

Which, of course, makes me think of Ted Lasso.

One yellow sign.

One word.

BELIEVE.

It sounds ridiculously simple and maybe it really is haha

But every destination has to exist somewhere before anyone arrives there.

Sometimes it exists first on a map.

Sometimes it exists only in someone’s head.

So let people board.

Let people leave.

Appreciate the ones who make the journey better.

Miss the ones who mattered.

But don’t stop the train trying to convince someone to stay.

It’s your train.

Choose where it’s going.

And then believe like hell that you’ll get there. That’s the Lasso way of living!