written by: Mala Pachla 

Let me begin by talking about fulfilling your dreams, or more precisely about turning your plans into a reality. We can choose to live inside our dreams, in the small and cozy space of our imagination. No one looks there. There we can think about things which can be more or less real. Our dreams belong to us alone, and if they stay in this space for the rest of our lives, there’s a chance that nobody will ever know about them. What a pity!

When it comes to the very significant issue of dreams, it’s important and sometimes even crucial to turn them into words and speak out loud. This way a thought can materialize into extraordinary power. And a dialogue with another person can turn it into a real driving force.

That's how it worked for me. About twelve years ago it seemed to me that my life came to a halt. I was living an intense life, I had a group of people around me, a job, a schedule filled to the brim, and yet… I felt empty. And so, one day, when I was with a friend, on our way home from the movies, I made a statement that I feel has changed my life and thanks to that utterance I am where I am today: in the land… take a guess!… yes, in the land I've always dreamed of.

"I have to move out of my apartment," I announced suddenly and courageously. It was this sentence. I did not know then how I would do it, where I would move, whether it would be far or near. For years I have felt, somewhere under my skin, that the walls of my Warsaw studio apartment are saturated with toxins I have been exposed to all my life. It was these invisible, small toxins that made life difficult for me and turned it into something quite different from what I dreamed of.

It’s not like moving out suddenly changed my world. It did not happen suddenly and immediately, but I believe that the sequence of events that followed this decision turned everything upside down. It happened exactly the way I wanted. It turned out that the direction I chose pointed me towards the people who made a lot of important things happen. But the initial decision itself belonged to me and I try not to forget about that.

To support these arguments with facts, I dare say that thanks to moving to the other side of Warsaw I met a certain Magpie on the way, thanks to which I traveled to Mongolia. While preparing for the trip, I met a blue-eyed man who is now my husband. Much has happened on the way. The culmination of the events after the once uttered phrase: "I have to move out of my apartment," is undeniably the fact that we now live in the mountains. So… ha! yes, where we always dreamed of living. We now more or less lead a life we've always dreamed of!

All of this, of course, is not as easy as the story suggests. It was not just a series of fortunate events that has propelled me to where I am today. It was my hard and - crucially - consistent work. I’m afraid it doesn’t work any other way. But I do believe that we call our dreams just that only to justify not making them a reality. Let's start renaming our dreams and call them plans. If you have a plan, you can start working on its realization. It doesn’t matter if it’s going to be a balloon flight, buying a ticket to Australia or owning a small house in the countryside. Today I believe that everything is possible. Sounds trite? It may be so, but as banal as it sounds, it may provide you with all the joy in the world. We’ll come back to this another time.