Chasing Light

My friend Rachel has a dog, Dixie. Dixie’s favorite pastimes appear to be eating ice and chasing flashlight beams. Rachel’s explanation for this behavior is that Dixie thinks the ice is food and the light can be caught. It forces me, somewhat painfully, to think about my own choices, what I go after and what I choose to sustain myself with. How much time do I spend chasing light? Pursuing people and positions that are completely unattainable is something I do well and often. I like to blame it on those people who say, “Anything is possible!” they give you a false sense of hope and security. They want you to believe the only reason your world isn’t picture perfect is because you haven’t been shooting for the moon (because apparently even then, when you miss you land among the stars). Well guess what? Not everything is possible. Some things will never happen. I don’t know if this makes me a pessimist or a realist or if these two things are actually one and the same. How much time do we spend attempting impossibility? Unlike Dixie, as humans, very few of us have someone to turn off the flashlight, take away the ice and give us something possible to chase and nutritious to eat, so we don’t kill ourselves on fabrications and fallacies. When will I see that ice will never sustain and light will never be caught? Some of my dreams will eventually be puddles of water and dead batteries . How do I accept this and learn to let it go?