With a Little Bit of Delusion…

We’ve talked about how when we enter the dreaming process we need to operate with a sense of childlike imagination and suspended disbelief. I want to introduce two more concepts before we finally get to the activities to discover our dreams. Today we will talk about delusion, and on Monday, we’ll finish off with luck.

Here’s the thing, I usually get what I want. I’m just pretty lucky that way. Things generally work out for me. And I know that sounds very arrogant to say, but it’s true in my life, and hopefully, it’s true in yours. Most people would call this luck, but there is another side to that coin, delusion. Because if things don’t work out for me the way I wanted, I can delude myself into thinking that maybe that’s not what I actually wanted, which means that maybe I did get exactly what I wanted. It’s tricky like that. I’ll give two examples to hopefully explain this better: my husband’s first deployment and my son’s birth.  

For my husband’s first deployment, I didn’t want him to go. Like most of y’all, I married my spouse because I loved them and wanted to be with them. I was not interested in the idea of going five months without seeing each other. I know I’ve talked a lot about how I was feeling in those months leading up to the deployment, but I left out the part where there was a real possibility my husband wouldn’t deploy. About two months before his squadron entered the preparation stage for their deployment, my husband had a medical incident that left him with long-term DNIF (which does not include flying, and I personally think is one of the worst acronyms the Air Force has).  

Being DNIF meant that my husband couldn’t participate in any of the pre-deployment exercises. If he wasn’t fully trained, he could not deploy even if he was medically cleared before the squadron left. This created a very tight window for him to get the training done that would allow him to deploy since the doctor he needed to see to be cleared wouldn’t be available until the end of May, while the deployment was set to happen in mid-July.

There just wouldn’t be enough time for him to be ready to go with the squadron. It looked like I could get what I wanted if what I wanted was for my husband to stay home. The thing was, my husband and I were genuinely concerned about this medical issue and wanted answers. Waiting until May just wasn’t an option, and we both worried that something would be seriously wrong. At the time, I was nannying for a family of doctors. Both parents were pediatricians who worked in the university hospital, which meant that they had many connections outside the pediatric community. In medicine, things always improve the sooner we can catch them, so I asked the family for help. They called a friend, and Jacob was in to see the doctor by the end of January.

Everything turned out fine, and my husband was cleared to fly again. He would be able to deploy with his squadron. I wouldn’t get what I wanted. I just wasn’t going to be lucky this time. My husband would not be magically pulled off the deployment. But here’s the gift of a little bit of delusion: maybe I did get what I wanted.

The thing was, my husband wanted to deploy. He wanted to go serve. He wanted to do the job he had been trained to do. He wanted to be with his squadron. None of that meant that he didn’t want to be at home with me. It just meant the two circles of his love couldn’t connect at this point.  

In the same spirit, I would gain a lot from going through the deployment. I would get to prove myself and have more credibility to speak on surviving and thriving in this life. I would get the badge of honor for surviving a deployment that so many military spouses carry. I would gain more connection to this community. So maybe I did get what I wanted.

Looking back on the deployment two years later, I can see that I did get exactly what I wanted. I got to survive and thrive through something so difficult. Our marriage was strengthened in so many ways. My husband felt like he had fulfilled a piece of his calling. It was absolutely worth everything we went through, and while I would have loved to have spent that time with my spouse, we gained so much through the experience. I got what I wanted. I hope you’re starting to see how this works.  

Now the story about the birth of my son. I have always dreamed of having a daughter. I have also dreamed of having a son, but the dream for my daughter has been stronger because of the connection I developed with her by writing her letters throughout my adolescent years. So our plan has always been to have two children: a boy and a girl. My husband wanted a son first because he was the oldest in his family and liked the idea of an older brother. I wanted a daughter first so that I wouldn’t worry about not getting what I wanted during my next pregnancy.

When we found out we were pregnant, I had a feeling that it was a boy. No matter how much I wanted it to be my daughter, I sensed that it was my son. We got the genetic screening back and learned it was a boy. I adore my son and can’t imagine a world where he didn’t come first. But I didn’t get what I wanted, or did I?

I really disliked being pregnant. There was not a single part of that experience that I enjoyed, and compared to some friends, I had a pretty easy pregnancy. Between nausea, hemorrhoids, and heartburn, I was ready to be done well before it was over. During the entire process, I honestly doubted whether I was willing to do it again. Labor and delivery were incredibly easy for me (in fact, if that’s all it took to bring a baby into this world, I would have no qualms about doing it a few more times), but postpartum was very difficult to recover from.  

If I had had my daughter first, I don’t think I would do it again. It was just too harsh of a process for me to do over again unless I desperately wanted the outcome. But I can’t imagine a world without my son, so I did get what I wanted. I needed my son to come first. I have not had the first-hand experience of watching a big brother since my brother is the youngest in our family, and I am excited to see that dynamic play out. I believe everything happened in the order it was supposed to happen. I believe that I got exactly what I wanted when I had my son.

That’s how a little bit of delusion helps. I’m not talking about gaslighting ourselves into believing that we wanted the tragic events in our life to occur. I’m talking about when our dreams aren’t coming true quite the way we thought they would. Can we convince ourselves that the beautiful things that come out of these detours may have been what we wanted in the first place? As Jack Canfield discusses in the success principles, can we convince ourselves to become inverse paranoids, believing that the world is out to help us succeed rather than trying to make us fail?

• -Sarah Hartley