Await My Dreams

 

This morning, I realized that many of my dreams had already come true.

For much of my life, I felt as though I was still struggling and still waiting. I often looked at the dreams that hadn’t come true yet and felt discouraged by how far away they seemed.

Looking back now, I can see that many of my old dreams quietly came true along the way.

I just didn’t recognize them at the time.

Sometimes dreams come true, just not in the way we imagine.

After working hard to save money and spending a long time persuading my mother, I was finally able to attend college in Pennsylvania.

After I graduated from college, I became so homesick that I returned to Japan. I worked there for eight years and thought my dream of living in America was over.

Then I met my American husband.

Without planning it, I found myself living in the United States again, and I have been here ever since.

Some dreams take much longer than we expect.

I wanted to speak English fluently from the time I was about nine years old.

I attended a small English school once a week. Later, I studied English throughout middle school, high school, and college.

Yet like many people in Japan, I still couldn’t really speak English.

When I first arrived in the United States for college, I could read reasonably well because I had studied grammar and vocabulary. But I struggled to speak and understand what people were saying.

It was frustrating. At times, I couldn’t imagine ever speaking English comfortably.

After my first year, I nearly gave up.

Fortunately, I gradually began to notice that my English was improving.

Even now, I still make grammatical mistakes. Sometimes I misunderstand what people say. But I can live my life, raise my family, and communicate in a language that once felt impossible to me.

Sometimes dreams arrive after we’ve stopped waiting for them.

As the years passed, I began to wonder if it would ever happen.

By the time I was 33, I had almost given up on finding the right person.

Then, not long afterward, I met my husband.

Today, we have four wonderful sons.

Some dreams arrive when we’re finally ready for them.

Instead, I chose a practical path.

My mother often told me:

“You can’t support yourself through art.”

Many artists have probably heard something similar.

Over the years, I tried different businesses and failed many times. Along the way, I learned that money alone is not enough to motivate me.

Eventually, at the age of 50, I began painting.

I am not a successful artist yet.

But for the first time, I feel that I am on the path I was meant to follow.

Looking Back

If I had become an artist when I was young, I would have painted different things.

I would have been a different person.

Living overseas, learning another language, building a family, succeeding and failing—those experiences shaped the person who finally picked up a paintbrush at 50.

 

This painting is called Await My Dreams.

For many years, I thought I was waiting for my dreams.

Now I wonder if some of them were waiting for me.