Dream On

One of my favorite things to do is to burst out in song with my kids and grandkids. I almost always have music playing when I’m around. I have certain Pandora stations for certain tasks: The Dan Fogelberg station for writing or doing anything at my desk, the Darius Rucker station when I’m cooking or working in the kitchen, the Foreigner station for housecleaning, the Christian Contemporary Radio station for starting my day. When I drive around in my car I just listen to the good ol’ fashioned radio.

Not too long ago I was driving somewhere with my 5 year old grandson, Ocean. Aerosmith’s song “Dream On” came on the radio and, of course, I started singing. He didn’t know any of the words, but he did join me on the chorus.

I hope he, and all of my children and grandchildren, always dream until their dreams come true.

Too often our dreams take one of several paths. Either we “grow up” and stop dreaming. Dreams aren’t fun because they aren’t real and having them is just too sad, or scary, or disappointing. Or, we still have dreams, but they are just that — dreams — fantasies that will never come true, and perhaps aren’t even meant to come true after all.

I hope that we can all take the third path, though; the path where we keep dreaming, and never stop. Never, ever stop until our dreams come true.

I cannot just sit around all day with my head in the clouds and expect my perfect life to suddenly appear before my eyes. If it were that easy, the world would be a perfect place.

But, dreams really do come true: I can spend my time doing what I want to do, with my husband, children, grandchildren, and extended family and friends close by or visiting often. I can do all of this because I am in great health, my time, my money, and my home are under control and exactly how I want them.

And all of these things keep getting better and better and better, because, since I have learned the power of dreaming, I keep getting bigger and bigger dreams.

Now, my life isn’t exactly how I want it yet. It is continually improving, but I do have a ways to go. It will become what I want, though, because I won’t stop dreaming until it does.

It can take 12–18 months just to train for the climb and that’s after they are already in fairly good physical and mental health and have some basic climbing skills. It can cost upward of $50,000 including gear, training, fees, and lots of other costs involved. And once you get to Nepal it takes 2 months of slowly climbing and adjusting to the extreme changes in altitude before you have a chance at reaching the summit, and then it’s just a chance. It is a long, risky journey, and many who try it don’t even reach the summit. Let’s just say, if I woke up tomorrow morning and decided I wanted to climb Everest, I would not accomplish that goal by the end of the week, probably not by the end of the year. It would take me a very long time to realize that dream.

But people do it. There are people who have the dream of climbing Everest and they do what it takes to make that dream come true.

Challenging. That’s a good word.

One. Step. At. A. Time. And after we take the first step, we must take the next one, and the next one, and the next one, until we reach our own summit, just as I would start by walking around the block if I wanted to train for Everest.

Maybe I don’t have the ideal body I dream of yet, maybe it is still difficult for me to climb a lot of stairs, maybe it will soon be higher than 100 degrees outside in the Phoenix valley where I live

Can I drink my weight in ounces of water? Yes!

Can I choose to skip dessert? Yes!

Can I spend 30 minutes dancing around with my grandkids while we sing those songs I’m so fond of? Yes!

I can start to make my dreams come true, and if my dreams are really true dreams, meaning they are something I REALLY want, no matter what, they will come true, because I will dream until my dreams come true.

Look at your dream, the one I challenged you to imagine yesterday (and if you don’t have dream yet, what are you waiting for?}, and think about what you can do TODAY to get started. Even just one small thing, like emptying the change from your pocket into a vacation fund jar, or decluttering your sock drawer, or writing down the ideas you have for your novel. Start somewhere, but start, then keep going!

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