Harlem
BY LANGSTON HUGHES
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore—
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over—
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
I remember the moment I surrendered my aptitude for feeling free.
I graduated college and took a full time job I was expected to take. Many months before my graduation, I had planned a one to two month road trip across the country. That was my dream deferred.
I would go visit the multitude of homes I have lived in throughout my childhood. I would visit places that I have only seen in brochures (this was 1999) and that haunted my mind. Montana was stuck in my mind. I could not push out images of the southwest deserts of the US. The Rocky mountains. I wanted to see it all.
I would take a permanent professional job at some point, but I really felt I needed to do this. Even more than that, I WANTED to do this. All the routes I could take were planned on some late 1990’s desktop mapping software that I wish I could remember now for nostalgia’s sake.
I still remember the trip as planned in every detail.
I would start north, up from Knoxville, to Noblesville, Indiana, just north of Indianapolis, where I had lived previously up until the age of 10. Then pass through Hudson, Wisconsin where I was born, but of which I don’t have a memory.
Then I would push through to where I lived between Wisconsin and Indiana…South Dakota. This is the place that has stuck most in my head. I’m not sure why. I lived there between the ages of 2 and 5 yet I have such rich and vivid memories. I was so looking forward to returning.
My trip would take me through Montana. At the time this was the ultimate place to visit. With Big Skys, rushing rivers and vast mountain ranges, it epitomized the ideal I wanted to live. As great as it would be, I would continue on through Wyoming, Idaho, Washington, Oregon, and California.
Throughout this west coast journey I would explore all the great wonders it had to offer: Yellowstone, Mount Hood, Yosemite, Death Valley, forests, trees, everything I may never see again after I take a job that would lock me in.
I imagined, once I reached southern California I would start heading back east, in a meandering sort of way. Through Arizona and New Mexico and Utah and Colorado down into Texas, cut up through Louisiana and then a straight shot back to Knoxville.
A Dream Deferred
Taking that job right out of college was the prudent thing to do. I’ve always pegged myself as a pragmatist, but my heart betrays that label. To this day I wish I had spurned the expectations put on me and turned down that job and took that trip.
That was the moment I lost my life. That was the moment I lost my childlike tendencies towards wonder and excitement and possibilities. That is the moment I became a “responsible” adult.
I work in the same domain that I started in 25 years ago. I don’t feel like I’m making any greater impact then I made when I started, in a culture riled with ineffectiveness and stagnation.
If I had made another choice in the spring of 2000, if I had followed my desires, to take that trip, where would that have led me? Someplace better? It’s too late to answer that. But then again that can never be answered. One can only ever take one path.
I feel I should have taken time to explore more in my youth. That is a regret of sorts. I’m still alive. So what’s stopping me? Maybe I will reserve that discussion for another time.