So, what are your hopes and dreams?

I often ask this to provoke people, usually in a moment when I have nothing else to say to them, or if the conversation is in need of an injection of character that is at the moment lacking. But I have never thought seriously why people squirm when I ask this, exhibit varying degrees of uneasiness, annoyance (understandable, since I partly aim to be a pest), and resentment towards me and my trump card of a conversation starter and ender.

Personally, I do not see the harm this question has. Are we not at the age where we are constantly thinking of our future, anyway? Don't we, as a generation of college students and grads with a whole world of adulthood possibilities, always have our hopes and dreams at the front of our minds? It does not seem like it would be a stretch for people to throw something out there for the sake of conversation, like "I plan to apply for graduate school," or "I want to travel and live in a few places before I am tied down with a mortgage."

In practice, "what are your hopes and dreams" is the conversational equivalent of waking someone up from a deep sleep for no good reason. They become irked by my nerve to ask such a question. Perhaps I need to be more sensitive and consider how personal and meaningful hopes and dreams are to all of us, and to display them willy-nilly without proper warning or prep time may throw some off guard. For all fairness, I do not expect a prepared answer or essay, but only to talk about what is on everybody's mind.

What concerns me is that hopes and dreams are not at the front of people's minds, that one is forced to search themselves every time I ask that question. If they have to search, they may find that they don't know what they want or they don't have an exact plan, and we are so often told that we need to know what we want to do with ourselves, that they feel bad about this. I do not wish to make people feel bad, but I also do not demand to hear a friend's detailed five year plan, since I do not have one of my own, or at least for a long time I did not. I am more than content to hear my friend's ideas and options on what they wish to do in their future, and this makes for an interesting conversation. It is fruitful to talk about these subjects, since talking about hopes and dreams is one step into actualizing them.

I wonder if people resent explaining what they have been thinking in regards to their future, especially at random. They do not wish to expose their uncertainty, their vulnerability, even among friends? It is one thing to have trouble deciding on a plan, but to refuse to think and talk about having a plan, I can not help but think as avoiding the inevitable. Not to say that I devalue the option people take of "going with the flow" and waiting for their future to come to them, whether it be the development of ideas over time or by chance opportunity. But this in itself is a plan, and I am curious to know why people choose it.

Perhaps what irritates my friends most about this question is because it forces them to face a fear that they have. I too am often overwhelmed by the vastness adulthood offers, a whole life of time and agency, risk and responsibility. Our childhoods were filled with hope for the possibilities of the future, but the demands of education and the distance time placed between these two chapters allowed us to place adulthood on the shelf for perpetually later analysis. Now that we approach the event horizon, it causes us to be still and uncertain. Trying to conceptualize it all can be daunting, and sometimes I have to accept my bewilderment and fear of the unknown and move on with my life and look forward to gradual enlightenment. We also can not anticipate what will happen, completely out of our control, that will impact the course of our lives and cause us to readjust our plans and dreams. But most of the time, when I am not in a state of panic, I am open to discussing with peers about life, for you only learn from it.

I have never considered why some of my friends hate this question, but I am now concerned about their unwillingness to consider the future or verbalize their hopes and dreams, however short term, small, or subject to change they may seem. Am I asking them to do something that they do not wish to do? If one's hopes and dreams are not easily acceptable or in the process of being conceptualized, then where are they? Are there any: large or small, for this year or for this lifetime? Is it not ok to not know the short term, but have a vision of some far away life, whether it be one of security or family, or a particular place in mind, and to express it? All of these are important, and I do not see the stupidity of asking or talking about them. I dare people to have hopes and dreams, to risk sharing them with the ones they trust, even with the chance that they will never materialize, that we may fail. I do see the stupidity of avoiding these topics out of the fear of the unknown, out of the fear to dream, to not talk about one of the biggest things in the room, where ever we go.