Dreams: Part 1
As a kid, I used to daydream the day away; a lot like I do now. My school picture in 2nd grade is a shot of me laying on the grass staring off into space, arms folded in a way to prop my head towards the horizon. Dreaming is what I was made of.
Dreaming is still what I'm made of. I think and dwell on things that could be, I could be, or would just make things better. I can do this for days at a time, weeks, or even longer; I get sucked into my dreams sometimes. I find with myself, I can put the dream in a bottle and drink from it, intoxicate myself, and not do a thing. (So, I can dream of writing a blog that everyone reads and it shifts the global consciousness more towards equity and justice, or I can actually do the hard part of writing!)
I know I'm not the world's only dreamer! Last Friday, over $650,000,000 was posted for the Mega Millions drawing, and some reports say a collectine $1.5 billion worth of tickets were bought. Everyone was dreaming in the lead up to the drawing. Maybe you are a different type of dreamer, a person who is a project starter, but never a project completer and you are always chasing one dream after another; or maybe you don't really dream and want to find a dream like others?
This dream thing is hard. First of all, there is no time. When can we complete all these projects, dreams, goals, care for others we are responsible, accommodate a faster rise in living costs then rise in income, tell others we love them, eat, sleep, and do it all over again? Where does the money come from? If I can't do this dream alone, who will help?
Its hard, but doable. Here's what I found: a dream is just the start. Its the big picture, a scene from the future, but its only the start. Its the picture you need so you have an idea of what race you are running. Like at an all day track meet, it's the race keeper's gun and at an all-day track meet, it's always going off. But, you and I aren't in every race. The key is to find your event and run that race, not every race, but “your” race. Find “your” dream and focus on it.
“Your dream” is your big dream, the over-arching, reoccurring dream. This is the dream that keeps coming back. The idea of a dream in the west is now closely associated with Dr Martin Luther King. We understand it through his “I Have A Dream,” speech delivered on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. On that hot summer day in the midst of an even more oppressive climate of forced oppression, Dr King launched into his “I have a dream...” introduction and followed it with the dream itself. We know full well from history, this wasn't the first time Dr King spoke of an America of more equitable hearts and minds, and it wasn't the last. This was a new way of saying something that was said every day of the last decade of this prophet's life. In fact, historians are starting to call the last four to five years of his life, “the Dream Years.” To know your dream, answer this questions: “what are you constantly dreaming about?”
You, if you're like me, will want to think about the size and the scope of this dream. Don't! All we are doing is finding what race we are in, what race you are running. The size and scope of the issue or place or events aren't even realistic at this point. If you are good enough at it isn't a question yet.
Its tempting to dismiss our dream. I want to do it all the time. I need money and time now. I need to be more successful now. I need to make things happen now. But, eventually, I must be honest, otherwise I'm running the wrong race and am doomed to fail.
But do take a second and think of what it would be like if we did find our dream. If we knew where we were going? Imagine a world where people where driven by inward passion instead of work place status or by income. Think of the change in motive in just our lives, how much happier we would be because we felt internally driven to do things instead of externally coerced to do things. What would our worlds be like?
But please remember: A dream is how we know what race to run. Tell me, what race do you keep dreaming of running?
