Dare To Dream

(Kanji "Dream")

Dream. Don't ever let another soul tell you that what you dream isn't real. Don't ever listen to a voice, no matter whose voice it is, telling you that your dreams simply can't be real, or that they can't come true. The only one strong enough to stop your dreaming - of course, is you. Dream until every dream possible has been exhausted; and that is forever. Forever Dream.

When I go to the tattoo artist soon I will have this Kanji symbol etched into the inside of my left wrist (outer side). There is a reason for it. My daughter Laura is in love with all things Japanese - hence the choice for the Kanji. The word was chosen for my own soul - - because I dream. Because I have always dreamed. Because I will never ever, as long as I live, stop dreaming. Why would I try? From dreams come my best ideas. From dreams come the strength I have to believe. From dreams come the very essence of what I desire, and if I couldn't have what I desired, what would I want from living?

Laura and I just finished watching a very LAURA movie: "Enchanted" (2007 Disney). Naturally it is full of dreaming, ideas, creative madness, genius really, and without a doubt everything Disney was first created for. Without fantasy there is only reality; a sad and dense world of hurtful, meaningless, dreary world full of never-can-do people and those who have simply given up. I think it best to say that Winston Churchill summed it up: "NEVER never never give up". When I watch a film like Enchanted I am immediately reminded of the silliness of our world as well. We can openly and honestly confront some of our static behaviors with a film like this. We can bring our whimsical wants back to ground zero. We can also learn from our own mistakes of forgetting to remember to dream - to let go. To dance.

Dreaming and praying have much in common for me as well. Where I will not hold out for a stout little fairy-godmother to come along and dress me, I will hold rocks in my hands and lift up my heart and my voice to God asking for His intervention both in my own life and that of a man I dream of, believe in, and in the conscious mind fantasize about perhaps even in that place, that magical pixie-dust place where rivers of liquid crystals flow...because God made me. Not only did He make me, He gave me this heart. Where it fell is really not in my own control - dreaming (and praying) become necessary at this point. And I dance.

With love and life surrounding realities - with swirling visions of would be, could be, might be, should be, at least there is dancing. At least there is the dream. What good is a fairy-godmother when the heart is trapped? Let your spirit dance before a Creator of such gifts, let your mind wander to His blessings, dream.

The Kanji reminds me to never stop loving. It reminds me to never give up my hope. It reminds me that I am not in control of the realities which surround me. It even resembles the dancer as she spins and lifts her skirts to the wind without care. It dances on, it dances on.