The Questions Changed

There’s a Cat Stevens line that has been stuck in my head for some time now: for you will still be here tomorrow, but your dreams may not.

I’ve written about going after your dreams. This isn’t that. This is about the realization that when life gets complicated, it’s easy to slip into survival mode.

Not in a chaotic, dramatic way. Nothing that you can even point to and name. But a quieter version. The one that looks like getting through the day. Doing the things that need to be done. Keeping up. Managing.

It’s what we do, right? Work has to get done. Emails answered. The litter box cleaned.

The other day I was driving. Just driving. Windows down, volume up and that same Cat Stevens song came on.

And it suddenly hit me: the questions that had been guiding me had shifted.

From why am I doing this?
to what do I need to do next?

From what do I want?
to what’s required of me?

From what lights me up?
to what just needs to get done?

I didn’t even notice it happening.

It’s not that the dreams were gone, they were just blurred. Survival mode doesn’t ask you to stop dreaming. It asks you to wait. And wait. And wait. Until waiting becomes the norm. Until waiting starts to feel like what you’re supposed to be doing.

But if I’m honest, it didn’t happen just because life got noisy. Somewhere along the way, belief started to wobble. Just enough that what I once felt sure about began to feel less certain. Less possible.

And when that happens, survival mode starts to make more sense. Because it’s easier to focus on what’s in front of you than to keep holding onto something you can’t prove will work. It’s easier to manage the day than to keep showing up for a version of your life you’re no longer sure you believe in.

So the dreaming softens. Not because you don’t want it but because wanting it starts to feel harder than letting it go.

Something about hearing that line—you will still be here tomorrow, but your dreams may not—at that exact moment shifted something in me.

I don’t want to just be here.

I want to be the version of me who believes in dreams, who trusts that those dreams can—will—come true.

Life has detoured far enough from that version of me that finding my way back may take more than GPS.

But maybe that’s the work for now: opening the windows and noticing. Pausing to ask: What have I stopped making space for? And what might shift, even slightly, if I let it back in?

With presence,
Orly 🤍