You know the feeling. Your dream is so real, everything is familiar and you can’t tell where reality ends and the dream begins.
Then comes the giveaway. You’re running and suddenly your legs won’t cooperate. You’re frozen in place or moving in slow motion. You wake up with your heart racing, only to feel immediate relief when you realize you can move and you’re not stuck after all.
That sensation doesn’t only happen when we’re asleep. It happens all the time when we’re awake. Whenever we have a vision without a plan, forward motion stalls. The results we want don’t materialize, and after some time, we realize we haven’t moved any closer to where we hoped to be. Not because the vision wasn’t real, but because we never translated it into action. No steps were put in place, so we stayed stuck.
And sometimes, even when we do have a plan, it still isn’t enough. The best-laid plans mean very little until we start running to implement them.
The Gemara in Yoma highlights this idea powerfully. Every morning, each kohen would run to be the one chosen to clear the ashes from the altar. Their urgency reflected the understanding that outcomes require movement.
Growth requires three things: Vision. Planning. Running. Without the third, we’re left in that frustrating dream state of striving, struggling, and going nowhere. The goal isn’t just to dream clearly. It’s to wake up and run!