Making peace with your unlived dreams: why not every dream has to come true

“I will never be a great snowboarder.” That is how writer Niklas Göke opens his essay “Making Peace With Your Unlived Dreams”, published on his daily blog and later discussed widely again in tech circles.

An example many will recognise

Göke explains that, for genetic and non-genetic reasons, his knees are barely capable of surviving a three-hour hike, let alone the landing after a 1080. His orthopedist told him as long as 15 years ago to stay away from anything heavy on the knees — “like tennis, skiing, or, say, snowboarding.” He would love to take snowboarding lessons, but all he can do is watch videos of people doing stunts and live vicariously through them.

At first, this hurt badly: “How dare life take that from me!” he often thought, imagining what would happen if he went big on snowboarding anyway. There probably is a way to fix his knees enough to succeed, he concedes. But at some point he realised that life is big but also short.

Time that is never enough

The same thought is expressed by former Bachelor star Sharleen Joynt, who tells her husband: “It’s hard. I want to do everything with you. There’s not enough time.” Göke’s own list is longer still: he wants to learn kung fu, be a lot better at video games, get his Yu-Gi-Oh! hobby back on, and become fluent enough for everyday conversation in, say, eight more languages.

Reality looks different. He is self-employed, spends most of his time working, and when he is not working he tries to be with his girlfriend, family or friends. Over the last few weeks he has barely managed to make time to read, let alone pursue other, second-tier hobbies. Even if he won the lottery tomorrow, he doubts there would be enough time: “There’s never enough time.”

Peace as a decision

The real shift is internal. Over the years he watches snowboarding videos more and more rarely; his imagination runs wild less often, and when it does, it comes with smiles more than bitterness: “It’s okay. Leave the snowboarding to others. You are a writer. You have things to do where you are, and that is enough.”

The essay’s conclusion is simple but hard: use your imagination. Sometimes dreams can just be dreams — they needn’t all come true to feel satisfying. Watch videos. Read books. Spend time with the heroes you’ll never meet. Whatever you do, don’t get angry at your unlived dreams; extend a hand and make peace. We only get to sample a small taste of everything life has to offer, Göke writes, but in choosing deliberately we are doing the most important job we were brought here to do.