I think I've discovered something. A person is not comprised of or defined by their accomplisments or by what they say or how they seem...not really. It can seem that way though, and that's why we pass over a lot of gems without even realizing it. It isn't their popularity or who they're friends with or any of that.

The real essence of a person is their dreams...especially the ones that haven't materialized. In the detritus of broken dreams sparkles their highest goals, their ideals, their values, what they want most, what they desire most to give to the world. It tells more about who they really are than anything you could see from the outside. It is more than good intentions, a dream is the most powerful, potent part of you. Without dreams, what are we? Automatons, androids, moving bodies with no depth or soul. It's the most vulnerable, intimate part of us. I always feel a sort of fear whenever I speak out loud of my hopes and reams, as if by birthing them into the outside world via speech, they'll be endangered or jinxed somehow. I feel this way even if I'm only talking to the goats. It's that private, that personal.

I guess that's why, when I want to be close to a man, when I'm seeking to reconnect or to fall back in love with him to to find some appeal or questioning the future of the relationship, I ask him about his dreams or goals. What does he want? What does he see when he looks into the future? What is the goal? If the answer is absent or displeasing (for example, the Vietnam vet whose goal was to build and live in a house made out of sandbags) my interest wanes.

This isn't to say that pipedreams are enough; they aren't. There should be some effort to realize at least some of it (I don't think it's really possible for us to attain the entirety of it, or they'd cease to be appealing). But the dreams contain the seed of a person's character.

And broken or unrealized dreams make a person vulnerable, and therefore lovable (noone ever fell in love with the suit of armor). Don't be ashamed because it didn't work out or because you had to choose between two things andleave one behind, or even that you never started to try. The fact that it crossed your mind *is* worth something.