Feed Your Delulu

Look at your purple penguin.

What are some things you've always wanted?

Craved.

Desired.

Hoped for.

The outlandish ideas you're nervous to say out loud.

Accomplishments you want to achieve.

Bucket lists you've tucked away.

Dreams you're saving for when you have time.

• Lovers you want.

• Ideas you have.

• Hopes.

• Dreams.

• Desire.

Delulu.

I imagine my delulu as a dream from childhood that I placed in a drawer somewhere beneath my crayons and glitter.

There's a drawing in there.

A purple penguin beneath an enormous rainbow.

It has been sitting there collecting dust as days turned into weeks, weeks into months, months into years...

And somewhere along the way, the world fed me reality.

Reality started shaping the things I could hope for.

The desires I was allowed to have.

The things someone like me could reasonably expect.

The function I was meant to serve.

Reality has a way of painting the most colourful rooms greige.

Reality has a way of building grown-ups.

Eventually, anything that exists beyond those four greige walls starts looking a little...

Well.

Delulu.

But I've been thinking about proximity lately.

About the things we stand close enough to see.

The things we're surrounded by.

The people whose lives become evidence for what life looks like.

And I've been wondering:

When did the reality closest to us become the boundary of reality itself?

Because those aren't the same thing.

Perhaps your parents never travelled.

Nobody in your family went to university.

Nobody around you made art for a living.

Nobody you knew had a healthy relationship.

Nobody started over at forty.

Nobody climbed the mountain.

Nobody wrote the book.

Nobody moved to Japan.

Nobody did whatever strange little thing has been sitting underneath your crayons all these years.

So eventually:

I've never seen anyone do this.

quietly became:

People like me don't do this.

And then, perhaps:

I can't do this.

Curious.

Because children don't begin there.

A child will tell you they're going to become an astronaut, veterinarian, ballerina, paleontologist and dragon trainer.

Simultaneously.

Qualifications pending.

They haven't yet learned to run desire through the machinery of perceived plausibility.

They just...

Want.

And no, I don't think adulthood requires us to abandon reason and begin making major financial decisions because our inner seven-year-old wants a pony.

At ease, soldier.

Reality is useful.

Reality has budgets.

Calendars.

Physics.

Consequences.

Reality would also like me to acknowledge that penguins are not, generally speaking, purple.

Fine.

But perhaps reality doesn't always deserve the first turn.

Maybe desire does.

Because there's an enormous difference between:

• Impossible.

• Improbable.

• Difficult.

• Expensive.

• Inconvenient.

• Unfamiliar.

• Socially embarrassing.

And:

I've never seen anyone near me do it.

We have a peculiar habit of collapsing all of those things into one word.

Unrealistic.

And I wonder how many desires we've buried that way.

Imagine you said:

I want to climb Mount Everest.

Boldly.

Out loud.

And rather than someone immediately responding:

"That's crazy."

They asked:

"What's the first step?"

Not:

Can you do it?

Not:

Are you capable?

Not:

Do you understand how unlikely that is?

Just:

What's the first step?

Because there's an extraordinary amount of life between a dream and an accomplishment.

And the first step might actually be the easiest.

Name it.

That's all.

You don't have to climb anything today.

You don't have to buy the plane ticket.

Quit your job.

Write the novel.

Confess your undying love.

Please don't propose to Linda from Accounting because you read something strange on the internet.

We've only just gotten Linda out of HR.

Maybe once you've worked through your shit with Linda from Accounting, you finally work up the courage to ask her out.

Maybe that's your delulu.

Maybe you book a plane ticket to Japan because you've wanted to go since you were twelve.

Maybe you apply for something you're wildly underqualified for.

Maybe you take a dance class at forty-seven.

Maybe you admit that you don't actually want the sensible life you've spent fifteen years constructing.

Maybe you start writing into the void and behave rather suspiciously as though somebody might eventually want to read it.

Before there is evidence, there is desire.

Before there is accomplishment, there is an idea.

Before there is a plane ticket, there is Japan.

Before there is a book, there is someone staring at an empty page thinking:

I have something to say.

And before anyone else decides whether the thing you want is realistic...

There is you.

Wanting it.

Maybe that's where we keep getting ahead of ourselves.

We demand evidence from dreams that haven't been given an opportunity to exist yet.

We ask:

Can I have this?

before we've allowed ourselves to answer:

Do I want this?

Those are different questions.

The first requires reality.

The second requires honesty.

Reality can have its turn.

Tomorrow, perhaps.

It can bring its spreadsheets and sensible shoes and explain logistics.

Today, go find the drawer.

Dig beneath everything you've learned about who you're supposed to be.

Find the ridiculous picture.

The impossible career.

The inappropriate desire.

The country you've never visited.

The person you've imagined becoming.

The life you've quietly thought might belong to somebody else.

Pull it out.

Blow off the dust.

Look at your purple penguin.

And before you decide whether you can have it...

Ask yourself:

Do I still want it?

If the answer is yes?

Good.

Name it.

And then, for goodness sakes mon cœur

Feed your delulu.

—M🖤