An INteresting Path To A Dream Come True
I haven’t forgotten my dreams for this year since I’ve been gone. During the past three months, I have had three more dreams come true, and they all played out differently than expected. At the beginning of this year, I created a list of twelve dreams I wanted to achieve in 2024. I’ve now checked five of those off the list.
As of November 27th, I am the proud owner of a 2025 Toyota Sienna. Now, the dream I had written down at the beginning of the year was to buy a Honda CR-V. Those are two different cars, so you could argue that my dream didn’t come true. But since I wrote that dream down at the beginning of the year, it has changed, and I want to share what that process looks like because you will have many dreams shift from the time you set them to the time you achieve them.
I was rear-ended in late August of this year. Thankfully, my son and I were 100% fine after the accident. My Toyota Camry was not, though. A twelve-year-old car with 230,000 miles on it does not have to get hit hard to be considered totaled. Honestly buying a new car had gone off the agenda for this year. I planned to shift that dream to the next year before the accident. Making it work with one vehicle isn’t in the cards for our family unless we absolutely have to. We were fortunate enough to be able to borrow a car from my grandparents to last us until the insurance paid out, and we found a good deal.
The vehicle we borrowed was a minivan, though, and after three months of driving it, there was no way I could downsize to a mid-range SUV. My plan had always been to get a CR-V next and a minivan afterward. But my relationship with cars is for a lifetime, and in an ideal world, I would keep my new vehicle for at least 10 years. A decade from now, my son will be 12, and although we plan on expanding our family, both of our kids will be well out of the pack-n-play/stroller stage when we upgrade to a minivan.
A midsize SUV is excellent, but that size doesn’t give much more trunk storage than a traditional sedan, and that was one of the most significant pieces we wanted to upgrade with a new car. When you compare a full-size SUV with a minivan, they are pretty similar across the board, especially from a cost perspective. But I always knew I wanted to be a minivan mama, so that was the route that made the most sense.
But believe me, I had the same dream-come-true feeling sitting in our new car that I had when I sat in the CR-V back when we bought my husband’s new car. Jumping 13 years of car development felt like an upgrade, and going with the top-of-the-line vehicle definitely felt like a dream come true.
Our dreams are going to change over time. Sometimes, that period is pretty quick, and it’s ok to say that we want one thing and then decide over time that we actually want something else. I figured I would be pushing this dream off, but life intervened and forced it to happen much sooner than I expected. In a way, this was probably the best-case scenario for it to happen, too. There was an accident where no one was hurt, and we got far more for my car from an insurance payout than we ever would have trading it in. Being in a position to borrow my grandparent's car for a few months meant that I got to hone what I wanted in a low-pressure environment rather than upgrading to a CR-V and realizing two years from now that it didn’t meet my long-term needs.
We make our dreams specific so that we know what we are aiming for. Having a clear picture of the end means that we can measure success much easier. But it’s ok if that picture needs to change. It’s the principles and values that we are chasing with these things. We can adjust whatever we need to as long as we end up where we want to be. My dream was always a new (to me) car with more trunk space, seat heaters, and a safe place to transport my baby and all of his friends one day. At the time, I thought that would be the CR-V, but there is no doubt in my mind that my dream was for this Toyota Sienna, even if I didn’t know that until just a couple of weeks ago.