“Life is full of beauty. Notice it. Notice the bumble bee, the small child, and the smiling faces. Smell the rain, and feel the wind. Live your life to the fullest potential, and fight for your dreams.” Ashley Smith
It's possible you've never heard of Ashley Smith. She was a single mom who lost her child because of a drug addiction. Four years after her husband died of a stab wound, she was held hostage by Brian Nichols, a man who reportedly had just escaped from jail and killed several people before randomly selecting her as his hostage. While hostage, she read to him from the Bible and gave him some of her stash of meth. Her captor let her go when she told him she wanted to visit her daughter. She called 9-1-1 and he was arrested without incident.
Before the events transpired on that fateful day in June of 05, Ashley Smith had a dream of ending her addiction. Since those events transpired, she has written a book, remarried and is going to school.
We all have dreams. Sometimes, we let them wither on a shelf. Sometimes, we might even take them down and admire them. Hold them up to the light, let them sparkle in the sun before replacing them on the shelf for safe-keeping.
Sometimes, we might even choose to live our dream.
Thoreau wrote, "If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours."
Shoot for the moon. You'll end up amongst the stars.
I have a dream. It is a vision of my life as a full-time writer. I was close to it once. Got scared and backed away. Met a man and took a wrong turn into despair. I've been slowly inching closer to my dream again. Slowly taking steps that move me forward on the continuum of my dreaming.
It's time to leap. Time to embrace my dream with fervour and passion. Time to get real with my reality. To get up close and personal with my ambitions and down and dirty with my resistance to claiming my place in the sun.
As Thoreau suggests, in the act of living our dreams, we live a life beyond our imagination. In the act of writing here every morning, of moving constantly forward in my vision of my life, I am experiencing life beyond my imagination. Life amongst the stars, in the stratosphere of my dreams.
Dream big. Live large.
The question is: What's your dream for your life? Are you living it up every day or letting it wither on a shelf for fear it might fall to pieces?
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