Dreaming Wide Awake
An Invitation to Dream
I just realized I forgot to invite you to visit my new site - Dreaming Wide Awake. I’m sharing the intro below, but before you go please share one of your own dreams.
"No one should negotiate their dreams. Dreams must be free to fly high. No government, no legislature, has a right to limit your dreams. Never agree to surrender your dreams." - Jesse Jackson
Dreaming Wide Awake is about learning to live in two worlds - the world where we are in competition with with one another, where money determines our value, and we are taught to be afraid to make mistakes. In this world, work is not supposed to be fun. It's just something we have to do to survive. Happiness, satisfaction, and self-awareness are beside the point. In addition, trying to share our dreams with others - to be different in any way - is seen as egotistical and delusional. "What makes you think you're so special?" the adults in my life used to ask me when I talked about wanting to become an artist. I was too young at the time to verbalize what I knew instinctively - that everyone is special with a unique path, purpose, and gift to contribute to our collective story.
In the second world, dreams are alive and well, and creative self-expression is encouraged. The goal of education is to help each child discover, develop, and share their one-of-a-kind gifts while learning to live in balance with other humans, the planet, and the web of life they share. If you are born dreaming wide awake, as I was, the whole notion of comparison, competition, and the need to perform to earn approval and the right to exist is both alienating and deeply painful. Dreaming wide awake means you are able to see and propose alternatives to the status quo, offer new ideas, and create beautiful stories that can teach, allay fears, and break down walls. Those who dream wide awake are hardwired to not only create but help others find their own creative outlets.
It has taken me most of my 69 years on the planet to figure out that what most people call the "real world," is actually a dream and a bad one at that. Rumi, the visionary 13th-century poet, Islamic scholar, theologian, and Sufi mystic said it best:
"This place is a dream.
Only a sleeper considers it real...
and though we seem to be sleeping,
there is an inner wakefulness
that directs the dream,
that will eventually startle us back
to the truth of who we are.” - Rumi
On this site you’ll see examples of some of the work I've done to startle myself awake. I hope you enjoy and benefit from it as much as I have and that you too will begin to dare to dream wide awake. I look forward to learning, creating, and sharing with you.
With Love,
Jena
Copyright 2024 by Jena Ball. All Rights Reserved.
eggzactly, Jena!
Jena, your vision of dreaming wide awake meets my lived reality of already dreaming, building, and reclaiming. I do not dream of what could be—I chart the course for it.
For decades, I existed in the world where worth was measured in compliance, where belonging was conditional, where dreams were seen as indulgent distractions. I did what was expected. I functioned at 200%. And in doing so, I lost myself.
Then I stopped.
Not to dream, but to reclaim. To unlearn the lies that told me my dignity was ever in question. To step into the world I had already been shaping, brick by brick, breath by breath.
I wrote about this in 'What Dignity and Vision Make Possible.' https://open.substack.com/pub/wildlionessespride/p/what-dignity-and-vision-make-possible?r=1sss7q&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
Not a manifesto, not an abstract hope, yet a map of a world in motion. A world where safety, care, and equity are the foundation, where community is built on trust, and where belonging is not granted—it simply is.
Dreaming wide awake is not a metaphor for me. It is the daily practice of choosing presence over erasure, dignity over permission, and truth over silence.
I am not waiting for the world to wake up. I am living in the world I have refused to let die.