Dreams
They are interesting things.
Usually birthed at a young age and conformed each passing day with new experiences, loves, desires, successes, and failures.
A dream grows with you,
up until your dying breath you will remember the dreams you once had;
or you will remember the dreams that you lived.
The question is what will your end of life reveal?
Will you shoot for the stars?
Or will you let your dreams crash in the waves?
I’m a dreamer, and always have been. I have had dreams that have stayed with me since a very young age. I’ve also had dreams that have come and gone like the wind at a moment of inspiration. I’m proud to say that some of my dreams have been fulfilled. I have graduated highschool, I have stayed out of trouble, I have set an example, I have found the love of my life, and I have been able to travel, and my most current dream: I am in university and succeeding.
For years we have heard about dreams, Martin Luther King Jr. and his speech “I Have a Dream.” We have had inspiration to dream, to change, to live and love. I think one of the most recent dream influencers (is that a word?) has to be President Barack Obama, he is a man fulfilling a dream and bringing the world with him. I recently went to see “This Is It” the documentary focusing on the tour that Micheal Jackson was days away from embarking on. I have never been a huge fan of MJ’s, I’ve never been one to proclaim his talent, but as I witnessed how incredibly talented but humble he was I was brought to tears. I sat in this movie and I was seconds away from sobbing the whole time. I watched in amazement as I saw dreamers living their dreams. The dancers who had grown up idolizing MJ and learning how to dance because of him, the director who landed his dream job working with MJ and helping create what could have been classified as the most amazing tour of history, and of course MJ himself. He was llving his dream, but he was changing his fans as he did, and he died living his dream. I am confident that MJ would be proud to say, “I died living my dream.”
I want so badly to be able to say those words on my death bed. As I look ahead to my future and allow myself for just one second to envision me living my dream I have a range of emotion: excitment, happiness, elatement, fear, and doubt. I have a dream so large that I have no idea, no inkling as to how I could accomplish it. It’s big enough that I hesitate to write about it. There are voices in my life that speak against the dreams I have, of course there are voices that encourage me to keep dreaming and to them I am thankful, but it’s usually the negative that sticks right?
I have always dreamed of being in the medical field, I have always debated between nursing and medicine, and obviously nursing won. Some believe that I had given up on my dream of being a doctor, I look at it in a completely different way. I honestly have no doubt that I could become a doctor, it’s not doubting that I could do it that has stopped me from doing it. I see nursing as a greater privilege, I know it doesn’t make a lot of money, but as a nurse you are close to the patients, you are there for them when a lot of people aren’t. You get to spend life with those people at some of the hardest times of their lives, sometimes at the beginning of their lives, and often at the end of their lives, there is no greater privilege. I am excited to help people, to make a difference in someone’s life, to extend the Love that I know so well to those who don’t, in a very tangible way. I also went into the medical field knowing that one day I would not live in Canada, and nursing is a universal profession needed in some shape or form in every country in the world. I remember last year expressing my passion to one of my instructors and she instantly shot me down with a comment about how people come into nursing with a dream to save the world and will soon see what reality really is when they get into the real world. My heart crushed, but my dream still lives on.
So what is this dream that I speak about?
I dream to make a difference, I dream to love, I dream to weep, I dream to help, I dream that because of something I do someone else will be able to go on living.
What is the tangible dream?
One word:
Africa
To Be Continued……

Grandma

