Dreams Deferred

Two summers ago, I sat in Brother Mark Bennion's "Fundamentals of Literature Interpretation" class and read what Langston Hughes had to say about dreams deferred.

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore —
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over —
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
Like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

Of course I thought it was beautiful. How tragic, I thought, to defer a dream!

I don't want to be irreverent, especially toward one of my favorite poems, but I think Mr. Hughes might have been a little over the top with the whole explosion thing. I'm starting to think that, maybe, it's best if all our dreams don't come true.

When I was a little girl, I had it all figured out. I was positive that I was destined to do one of three things with my life. I either wanted to be a a checker—


a waver —

or, what I thought EVERYONE wanted to be:


A writer.

When Ryan and I registered at Target last weekend, I got to use the little scanner and feel the thrill of the beep. It wasn't as exhilarating as I thought it would be. And as good as I am at keeping a beat, conducting the music definitely isn't my favorite Church calling. But I couldn't live — I might, I daresay, explode? — without my daily dose of well-constructed sentences.

If I were to give a high school graduation speech this spring, I wouldn't tell anyone to chase all their dreams. I'd tell those 18-year-olds to dream, and to dream big. And I'd tell them to choose carefully which of those dreams they'd defer.

So they don't explode.