Let me tell you about a couple of my friends…

Meet Rob.

This is Rob. A good looking fellow. Short hair. Respectable even.
Mild mannered. Looks like someone you could drop your kids off with for a day and leave them in safe hands.
What might surprise you, at least it surprised me, is that Rob is a Rock and Roll drummer!
Yes sir, he is currently touring in some League of Rock thing, with a band called Miss Taken.
And I can just see him, rocking out on stage, all caged up with his drums, being hauled into the hair on a rotating drumming platform. Surrounded by 20something year old rock and roll wannabes, with their big hair SLAYER hair, tight leather pants, ripped under shirts, a cigarette hanging out of the corner of their mouths with a bottle of Jack in one hand, and the other in their pants.
And then, Rob. Rocking out on the drums.
I LOVE it!
It was a dream Rob had, and decided to follow it! And his lovely wife, is probably there for every concert, in the front row, with some biker jacket, with pink dyed hair, screaming at the top of her lungs while some gaggle of groupies are screaming beside her trying to figure out how come the “good looking drummer” isn’t paying any attention to them (and seems to be focused on the chick with the biker jacket with pink hair).

Meet Jenny.

This is Jenny. Jenny decided to climb Mountain Killiminjillio… or however you spell it.
And I can just see her standing there, mountain in the back drop, surrounded by what she described as “many big white men”. And then, Jenny. 5 foot 2 inch, 80 pound, Jenny.
Climbing a mountain.
And a real mountain.
Not like, a Manitoba Prairie Mountain… but a real mountain.
How she managed to climb that mountain, while “[I] lost consciousness from time to time”, is beyond me. I’d be like, “Oh heck no! I loose consciousness, I go back down. I don’t need to sit on no top of no big mountain… I’ll just Google Earth View it when I get home… alive!”

I wonder, how many people told them THEY were crazy for following their dreams?

The response to the dreams which are deposited into my care, my dreams, are not influenced (or at least should not be influenced) by those around me. Those dreams are there and will not be silenced until I decide to do something about them.

Maybe if I work hard enough, I can ignore my dreams. Bury them deep down inside, under layers of apathy and work. Keep myself so busy with doing “good stuff” that I don’t actually have time to do what I have been truly called to do. Maybe I can drown out my dreams by the roar of my new Dodge Challenger… okay, maybe not, but I’d like the opportunity to try.

So what dose it take to step out and chase our dreams? The most iconic speech I can think of about Dreams is Martin Luther King Jr’s, “I have a dream” speech… And in the end, it cost him his life. But I don’t think he would have changed his dream, even if he did know how it was going to end.

Life may not be best lived from a position of fear, life is for the dreamers, the risk takers, the crazies… or at least, that is how I want to live my life. If I were too scared to chase my dreams, we would not have managed to adopt two beautiful children. If I were too scared to follow my dream, I never would have left the family business and moved 1/2 way across Canada to a new job*, in a new city, where we knew no one. If I were too scared to follow my dream, I would never have had the courage to marry my wife – and yes, finding her was a dream come true.

If life were lived without dreams, then really, what is there? A life of simplicity, predictability, stability and calm serenity?! Why, who would want that!

MENTAL NOTE: I just realized that I might have some emotional/psychological issues when I finished typing that last sentence about stability, predictability and stuff…

Give me chaos! Give me love! Give me a life full of adventure and the unknown! But each time, it gets harder to harder to chase our dreams as the stakes seem to get higher and higher… and some dreams, may take years to be realized…

But the question remains the same… do we trust the dreams birthed inside of us, that they are going to be better than the safe life we know?

I would like to believe, that my adopted children had a dream once… and yes, they are having an exciting life of chaos, adventure, the unknown, and most importantly, love. They have been brave enough to embrace this dream. What about us – what about the old, the parents, the stately, the settled – are we brave enough to embrace what ever new dreams may come our way? Or, is our desire for “safe” greater than our desire for our “dreams”?

So if no one wants to support my dream to become the first Professional Male Zomba Dancer… then fine, so be it. I’m going to chase my dreams anyway… where ever they may lead… even if it makes no “sense” at times.

… but if you DO need a Professional Male Zoomba Dancer, you know where to reach me.

* == the wisdom of moving thousands of kilometers away from one’s mother (and therein free babysitting) can be debated, and has been debated by many. According to my mother, this was NOT one of my best decisions…