Pursuing My Dreams Quotes

I examine my own being, and find there a world, but a world rather of imagination and dim desires, than of distinctness and living power. Then everything swims before my senses, and I smile and dream while pursuing my way through the world.

...I have so many dreams of my own, and I remember things from my childhood, from when I was a girl and a young woman, and I haven't forgotten a thing. So why did we think of Mom as a mom from the very beginning? She didn't have the opportunity to pursue her dreams, and all by herself, faced everything the era dealt her, poverty and sadness, and she couldn't do anything about her very bad lot in life other than suffer through it and get beyond it and live her life to the very best of her ability, giving her body and her heart to it completely. Why did I never give a thought to Mom's dreams?

I’d rather fail miserably pursuing my dreams than succeed at something I have to settle for

He touched my cheek softly, his eyes intense as they gazed into mine."You might have to teach me a little about the human world, but I'm willing to learn if it means being close to you." He smiled again, a wry quirk of his lips. "I'm sure I can adapt to 'being human' if I must. If you want me to attend classes as a student, I can do that. If you want to move to a large city to pursue your dreams, I will follow. And if, someday, you wish to be married in a white gown and make this official in human eyes I'm willing to do that, too." He leaned in, close enough for me to see my reflection in his silver gaze." For better or worse, I'm afraid you're stuck with me now.

I had dreams. And I had to pursue them; otherwise my soul would have shriveled. The hardest part was allowing myself to want something other than what was socially acceptable, telling myself to go after it, then actually doing it.

Don't allow the fear of falling stop you from pursuing your dream. Prepare. Practice. Pray. Jump! It's through the fall that you'll realize you can to fly.

I am a free person. I am free to dream. I am free to pursue my dreams. I am free to love. I am free to serve mankind.

With no relation to social status, class, background, whether it suits them or not, people yearn for a dream. Sustained by a dream, hurt by a dream, revived by a dream, killed by a dream. And even after being abandoned by a dream, it continues to smolder from the bottom of one's heart, probably until the verge of death. A man should envision such a lifetime once. A life spent as a martyr...to the God named "Dream". Ultimately, to be born, and then to simply live for no better reason...I can't abide such a life. They are...excellent troops. Together we have faced death so many times. They are my valuable comrades, devoting themselves to the dream I envision. But to me, a friend is...something else. Someone who would never depend on another's dream. Someone who wouldn't be compelled by anyone, but would determine and pursue his own reason to live...And should anyone trample that dream, he would oppose him body and soul, even if that threat were me myself. What I think a friend is...is one who is my "Equal".

Early on the morning of November 9, when it came time to decide on what I’d say in my concession speech, I remembered those words. Inspired by them, I wrote these: “To all the little girls who are watching this, never doubt that you are valuable and powerful and deserving of every chance and opportunity in the world to pursue and achieve your own dreams.

I have been accused of a habit of changing my opinions. I am not myself in any degree ashamed of having changed my opinions. What physicist who was already active in 1900 would dream of boasting that his opinions had not changed during the last half century? In science men change their opinions when new knowledge becomes available; but philosophy in the minds of many is assimilated rather to theology than to science. The kind of philosophy that I value and have endeavoured to pursue is scientific, in the sense that there is some definite knowledge to be obtained and that new discoveries can make the admission of former error inevitable to any candid mind. For what I have said, whether early or late, I do not claim the kind of truth which theologians claim for their creeds. I claim only, at best, that the opinion expressed was a sensible one to hold at the time when it was expressed. I should be much surprised if subsequent research did not show that it needed to be modified. I hope, therefore, that whoever uses this dictionary will not suppose the remarks which it quotes to be intended as pontifical pronouncements, but only as the best I could do at the time towards the promotion of clear and accurate thinking. Clarity, above all, has been my aim.

Stability allows a person the freedom of choice, my friend. People can pursue their dreams only when they are living in a society where survival is not threatened on a daily basis.

I will go tell him of Hermia's flight: Then to the wood will he to-morrow night Pursue her; and for this intelligence If I have thanks, it is a dear expense: But herein mean I to enrich my pain, To have his sight thither and back again.

It seems to me that we all have a dream of our own, our own personal vision, our own individual way of giving, but for many reasons we are afraid to pursue it, or to even recognize and accept its existence. But to deny our vision is to sell our soul. Getting is living a lie, turning our back on the truth, and Visions are glimpses of the truth: Obviously nothing external can truly nurture my inner life, my Vision.

I want to talk about creating your life. There’s a quote I love, from the poet Mary Oliver, that goes: Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? I so clearly remember what it was like, being young and always in the grip of some big fat daydream. I wanted to be a writer always, but more than that, I wanted to have an extraordinary life. I’m sure I dreamed it a million different ways, and that plenty of them were ridiculous, but I think the daydreams were training for writing, and I also think they spurred me to pursue my dreams for real. Daydreaming, however awesome it is, is passive. It happens in your head. Learning to make dreams real is another matter, and I think it should be the work of your life. Everyone’s life, whatever their dream (unless their dream is to be an axe murderer or something.) It took me a while to finish a book. Too long. And you know, it doesn’t matter how good a writer you are unless you finish what you start! I think this is the hardest part for most people who want to write. I was in my mid-30s before I figured it out. The brain plays tricks. You can be convinced you’re following your dream, or that you’re going to start tomorrow, and years can pass like that. Years. The thing is, there will be pressure to adjust your expectations, always shrinking them, shrinking, shrinking, until they fit in your pocket like a folded slip of paper, and you know what happens to folded slips of paper in your pocket. They go through the wash and get ruined. Don’t ever put your dream in your pocket. If you have to put it somewhere, get one of those holsters for your belt, like my dad has for his phone, so you can whip it out at any moment. Hello there, dream. Also, don’t be realistic. The word “realistic” is poison. Who decides? And “backup plan” is code for, “Give up on your dreams,” and everyone I know who put any energy into a backup plan is now living that backup plan instead of their dream. Put all your energy into your dream. That’s the only way it will ever become real. The world at large has this attitude, “What makes you so special that you think you deserve an extraordinary life?” Personally, I think the passion for an extraordinary life, and the courage to pursue it, is what makes us special. And I don’t even think of it as an “extraordinary life” anymore so much as simple happiness. It’s rarer than it should be, and I believe it comes from creating a life that fits you perfectly, not taking what’s already there, but making your own from scratch. You can let life happen to you, or you can happen to life. It’s harder, but so much better.

Walt Whitman (1819–1892). Leaves of Grass. 1900. To You WHOEVER you are, I fear you are walking the walks of dreams, I fear these supposed realities are to melt from under your feet and hands; Even now, your features, joys, speech, house, trade, manners, troubles, follies, costume, crimes, dissipate away from you, Your true Soul and Body appear before me, They stand forth out of affairs—out of commerce, shops, law, science, work, forms, clothes, the house, medicine, print, buying, selling, eating, drinking, suffering, dying. Whoever you are, now I place my hand upon you, that you be my poem; I whisper with my lips close to your ear, I have loved many women and men, but I love none better than you. O I have been dilatory and dumb; I should have made my way straight to you long ago; I should have blabb’d nothing but you, I should have chanted nothing but you. I will leave all, and come and make the hymns of you; None have understood you, but I understand you; None have done justice to you—you have not done justice to yourself; None but have found you imperfect—I only find no imperfection in you; None but would subordinate you—I only am he who will never consent to subordinate you; I only am he who places over you no master, owner, better, God, beyond what waits intrinsically in yourself. Painters have painted their swarming groups, and the centre figure of all; From the head of the centre figure spreading a nimbus of gold-color’d light; But I paint myriads of heads, but paint no head without its nimbus of gold-color’d light; From my hand, from the brain of every man and woman it streams, effulgently flowing forever. O I could sing such grandeurs and glories about you! You have not known what you are—you have slumber’d upon yourself all your life; Your eye-lids have been the same as closed most of the time; What you have done returns already in mockeries; (Your thrift, knowledge, prayers, if they do not return in mockeries, what is their return?) The mockeries are not you; Underneath them, and within them, I see you lurk; I pursue you where none else has pursued you; Silence, the desk, the flippant expression, the night, the accustom’d routine, if these conceal you from others, or from yourself, they do not conceal you from me; The shaved face, the unsteady eye, the impure complexion, if these balk others, they do not balk me, The pert apparel, the deform’d attitude, drunkenness, greed, premature death, all these I part aside. There is no endowment in man or woman that is not tallied in you; There is no virtue, no beauty, in man or woman, but as good is in you; No pluck, no endurance in others, but as good is in you; No pleasure waiting for others, but an equal pleasure waits for you. As for me, I give nothing to any one, except I give the like carefully to you; I sing the songs of the glory of none, not God, sooner than I sing the songs of the glory of you. Whoever you are! claim your own at any hazard! These shows of the east and west are tame, compared to you; These immense meadows—these interminable rivers—you are immense and interminable as they; These furies, elements, storms, motions of Nature, throes of apparent dissolution—you are he or she who is master or mistress over them, Master or mistress in your own right over Nature, elements, pain, passion, dissolution. The hopples fall from your ankles—you find an unfailing sufficiency; Old or young, male or female, rude, low, rejected by the rest, whatever you are promulges itself; Through birth, life, death, burial, the means are provided, nothing is scanted; Through angers, losses, ambition, ignorance, ennui, what you are picks its way.

If I follow my dream and it shatters - I can accept having to regret that. But I don't want to regret not pursuing it in the first place.

Those who find courage to pursue their dreams, manifest gladness of the soul.

That the life of man is but a dream, many a man has surmised heretofore; and I, too, am everywhere pursued by this feeling. When I consider the narrow limits within which our active and inquiring faculties are confined; when I see how all our energies are wasted in providing for mere necessities, which again have no further end than to prolong a wretched existence; and then that all our satisfaction concerning certain subjects of investigation ends in nothing better than a passive resignation, whilst we amuse ourselves painting our prison-walls with bright figures and brilliant landscapes, — when I consider all this, Wilhelm, I am silent. I examine my own being, and find there a world, but a world rather of imagination and dim desires, than of distinctness and living power. Then everything swims before my senses, and I smile and dream while pursuing my way through the world.

I was born for the peaceful life, for rural quiet: the lyre's voice in the wild is more resounding, creative dreams are more alive. To harmless leisures consecrated, I wander by a wasteful lake and far niente is my rule. By every morn I am awakened unto sweet mollitude and freedom; little I read, a lot I sleep, fugitive fame do not pursue. Was it not thus in former years, that I spent in inaction, in the shade, my happiest days?

The promise of a hopeful future is motivation for the pursuit of my dreams.

I am giving my best in the pursuit of my most cherished dreams.

Since pursuing my dreams, I've starved, I've lived and I've starved.

I appreciate the scientific rigor with which you’ve approached this project, Anna,” said Christopher, who had gotten jam on his sleeve. “Though I don’t think I could manage to collect that many names and also pursue science. Much too time-consuming.” Anna laughed. “How many names would you want to collect, then?” Christopher tilted his head, a brief frown of concentration crossing his face, and did not reply. “I would only want one,” said Thomas. Cordelia thought of the delicate tracery of the compass rose on Thomas’s arm, and wondered if he had any special person in mind. “Too late for me to only have one,” declared Matthew airily. “At least I can hope for several names in a carefully but enthusiastically selected list.” “Nobody’s ever tried to seduce me at all,” Lucie announced in a brooding fashion. “There’s no need to look at me like that, James. I wouldn’t say yes, but I could immortalize the experience in my novel.” “It would be a very short novel, before we got hold of the blackguard and killed him,” said James. There was a chorus of laughter and argument. The afternoon sun was sinking in the sky, its rays catching the jeweled hilts of the knives in Anna’s mantelpiece. They cast shimmering rainbow patterns on the gold-and-green walls. The light illuminated Anna’s shabby-bright flat, making something in Cordelia’s heart ache. It was such a homey place, in a way that her big cold house in Kensington was not. “What about you, Cordelia?” said Lucie. “One,” said Cordelia. “That’s everyone’s dream, isn’t it, really? Instead of many who give you little pieces of themselves—one who gives you everything.” Anna laughed. “Searching for the one is what leads to all the misery in this world,” she said. “Searching for many is what leads to all the fun.

The rosy hearth, the lamplight's narrow beam, The meditation that is rather dream, With looks that lose themselves in cherished looks; The hour of steaming tea and banished books; The sweetness of the evening at an end, The dear fatigue, and right to rest attained, And worshipped expectation of the night,— Oh, all these things, in unrelenting flight, My dream pursues through all the vain delays, Impatient of the weeks, mad at the days!

Opportunities pop up for everybody all of the time. It's the way that we progress. It's whether or not you're in the right frame of mind or in the right stage of your life or if you're even looking for them [that determines] whether or not you see them. [...] As you take more risks you see opportunities more easily. [Risks are] never the safe option, but for me the safe option is the worst option. [...] The riskiest life I can think of is letting yourself to be molded into this comfortable, same-as-everybody-else routine. For me, that is risking my whole life.

There comes a time when you have to drop your burdens in order to fight for yourself and your dreams. Many of us carry baggage from the past that hinders our ability to fight for the things we want in life, our goals, our dreams. If you learn in this book to let go of those burdensome emotions and memories, then one of my chief objectives will be realized; you will be able to pursue and live your dreams.

I had known contentment before, brief snatches of time in which I pursued solitary pleasure: skipping stones or dicing or dreaming. But in truth, it had been less a presence than an absence, a laying aside of dread: my father was not near, nor boys. I was not hungry, or tired, or sick. This feeling was different.

Story to me is life. It’s purpose. We as humans have an the opportunity and obligation to live the most truthful story ever told, unfortunately so few ever live truthfully. They don’t follow their dreams and live lives filled with regrets and “what ifs”. I make it my purpose to pursue the dreams and life that I want. It’s very hard, but at the end of the day, when people read the story of my life, they will say, “He was true to himself”.

Writer's Resolution Enough's Enough! No more shall I Pursue the Muse and scorch the pie Or dream of Authoring a book When I (unhappy soul) must cook; Or burn the steak while I wool-gather, And stir my spouse into a lather Invoking words like "Darn!" and such And others that are worse (Oh, much!) Concerning culinary knack Which I (HE says) completely lack. I'll keep my mind upon my work; I'll learn each boresome cooking quirk; This day shall mark a new leaf's turning... That smell! Oh Hell! The beans are burning!

Yet I feel like Theseus running madly through the coils of the labyrinth with horrors following at my heels and every twist bringing a new and dreaded sight. I dream and it pursues me I am sunk so far in horror heaped upon horror that I cannot taste wine or see the sun above. The world has ended and I don't know why I yet Live

But it’s not just those early years without my parents that branded me. It’s the life I’ve led in America as a migrant, watching my parents pursue their dream in this country and then having to deal with its carcass, witnessing the crimes against migrants carried out by the U.S. government with my hands bound. As an undocumented person, I felt like a hologram. Nothing felt secure. I never felt safe. I didn’t allow myself to feel joy because I was scared to attach myself to anything I’d have to let go of. Being deportable means you have to be ready to go at any moment, ready to go with nothing but the clothes on your body. I've learned to develop no relationship to anything, not to photos, not to people, not to jewelry or clothing or ticket stubs or stuffed animals from childhood.

My friend, still seemingly perplexed, asked me "So if it's not about genitals, what is it about trans women's bodies that you find so attractive?" I paused for a second to consider the question. Then I replied that it is almost always their eyes. When I look into them, I see both endless strength and inconsolable sadness. I see someone who has overcome humiliation and abuses that would flatten the average person. I see a woman who was made to feel shame for her desires and yet had the courage to pursue them anyway. I see a woman who was forced against her will into boyhood, who held on to a dream that everybody in her life desperately tried to beat out of her, who refused to listen to the endless stream of people who told her that who she was and what she wanted was impossible. When I look into a trans woman's eyes, I see a profound appreciation for how fucking empowering it can be to be female, an appreciation that seems lost on many cissexual women who sadly take their female identities and anatomies for granted, or who perpetually seek to cast themselves as victims rather than instigators. In trans women's eyes, I see a wisdom that can only come from having to fight for your right to be recognised as female, a raw strength that only comes from unabashedly asserting your right to be feminine in an inhospitable world. In a trans woman's eyes, I see someone who understands that, in a culture that's seemingly fuelled on male homophobic hysteria, choosing to be female and openly expressing one's femininity is not a sign of frivolousness, weakness or passivity, it is a fucking badge of courage. Everybody loves to say that drag queens are "fabulous", but nobody seems to get the fact that trans women are fucking badass!

Even sleep offered no respite from my mental disorders. There was Nightmare Disorder, which is diagnosed when the sufferer dreams of being "pursued or declared a failure." All my nightmares involve someone chasing me down the street while yelling, "You're a failure!

Because when you’re young, life is about pursuing dreams. I have the rest of my life to take the safe road.

Pursued by grace and supernatural power from God, I will passionately pursued my most cherished dreams.

It is the possibility of the dream, which quickens my spirit to take action.

They were my closest friends and were pursuing their dreams of working in film and television, and I was pursuing my dream of someday having a dream.

I had this very rare privilege of being able to pursue in my life what had been my childhood dream. I know it's a rare privilege, but if you can tackle something in adult life that means that much to you, then it's more rewarding than anything imaginable." - Andrew Wiles

No way would I try to talk someone out of their dream, no matter what it is. Whatever it is, I believe you immerse yourself in it, work hard at it, express yourself through it, challenge yourself with it, give yourself every opportunity to fall in love with it, and explore the adventures that come with it. If it's the right dream for you and it allows you to support yourself, so that you're not pursuing your dream at someone else's expense, it will probably last a lifetime. If it stops being enjoyable and fulfilling and you fall out of love with it--if it starts feeling like drudgery to the point where it becomes painful and depressing-there's nothing wrong with saying, "Okay, what else do I want to do with my life?" and start pursuing that dream.

You might have to teach me a little about the human world, but I’m willing to learn if it means being close to you.” He smiled again, a wry quirk of his lips. “I’m sure I can adapt to ‘being human,’ if I must. If you want me to at tend classes as a student, I can do that. If you want to move to a large city to pursue your dreams, I will follow. And if, some day, you wish to be married in a white gown and make this official in human eyes, I’m willing to do that, too.” He leaned in, close enough for me to see my reflection in his silver gaze. “For better or worse, I’m afraid you’re stuck with me now.

My heart is a traitor,” the boy said to the alchemist, when they had paused to rest the horses. “It doesn’t want me to go on.” “That makes sense,” the alchemist answered. “Naturally it’s afraid that, in pursuing your dream, you might lose everything you’ve won.” “Well, then, why should I listen to my heart?” “Because you will never again be able to keep it quiet. Even if you pretend not to have heard what it tells you, it will always be there inside you, repeating to you what you’re thinking about life and about the world.” “You mean I should listen, even if it’s treasonous?” “Treason is a blow that comes unexpectedly. If you know your heart well, it will never be able to do that to you. Because you’ll know its dreams and wishes, and will know how to deal with them. “You will never be able to escape from your heart. So it’s better to listen to what it has to say. That way, you’ll never have to fear an unanticipated blow.

I had spent the first half of my twenties fighting to find the will to process everything that I’d survived in my childhood and adolescence. Having done the hard work, I was now in a chapter in my life where I had the clarity to pursue my dreams and passion and find some actual success.

As soon as I had believed that financial security purchased emotional security, I'd lived a dependent, conditional life. Now I realize that rather than mortgage myself for a dream life on a layaway plan, I prefer the rather nice kind of life I've stumbled into. My desire for a double oven has less to do with signaling that I belong to a certain class or have reached a type of perfection and more to do with the fact that I haven't figured out how to make a pot roast and an apple pie at the same time. So I make the pie ahead of time and reheat it. I think it was Mark Twain who said, 'Happiness is wanting what you have, not having what you want.' I tell my kids this, hoping they will learn to balance the act of pursuing with the act of savoring.

In my early fifties, I was going through a phase where few things felt right and I was trying to figure out those that did. It was not uncommon. In your twenties, you pursue your dreams. By your late thirties and early forties, you hit a certain stride. Then you hit your fifties, you get your first annoying thoughts of mortality, you begin more serious questioning of not just the meaning of your life but of what’s working, what’s not working, and what you still want, and all of a sudden you don’t know which way is up. You thought you knew but don’t. You just want to get to where life feels okay again.

To you, dear reader: Thank you from the bottom of my heart for everything. None of this would have been possible without you. I could write another thousand pages about how grateful I am, and will always be. But in the end, all I can think to say is that I hope that your dreams, whatever they may be, come true. I hope you pursue those dreams with your whole heart; I hope you work toward them no matter how long it takes, no matter how unlikely the odds. Believe in yourself, even if it feels that the world does not. Believe in yourself, and it will carry you farther than you could imagine. You can make it. You will make it. I’m rooting for you.

With a century and change between the 1880 convention and now, I’ll admit I rolled my eyes at the ideological hairsplitting, wondering how a group of people who more or less agreed with one another about most issues could summon forth such stark animosity. Thankfully, we Americans have evolved, our hearts made larger, our minds more open, welcoming the negligible differences among our fellows with compassion and respect. As a Democrat who voted for Al Gore in the 2000 presidential election, an election suspiciously tipped to tragic Republican victory because of a handful of contested ballots in the state of Florida, I, for one, would never dream of complaining about the votes siphoned in that state by my fellow liberal Ralph Nader, who convinced citizens whose hopes for the country differ little from my own to vote for him, even though had those votes gone to Gore, perhaps those citizens might have spent their free time in the years to come more pleasurably pursuing leisure activities, such as researching the sacrifice of Family Garfield, instead of attending rallies and protests against wars they find objectionable, not to mention the money saved on aspirin alone considering they’ll have to pop a couple every time they read the newspaper, wondering if the tap water with which they wash down the pills is safe enough to drink considering the corporate polluter lobbyists now employed at the EPA.

My grandparents taught me that living a simple life isn’t about self-deprivation. Instead, it’s about giving yourself the time, freedom, and money to pursue your dreams.

Failure is ambition in motion.

For my dream was not a dream deferred. It was a dream pursued, fought for, supported, and ultimately, realized.

Stability allows a person the freedom of choice, my friend. People can pursue their dreams only when they are living in a society where survival is not a daily threat. In a society without security and stability, there are no intellectuals or businessmen or artists or geniuses. Man is constantly in fight or flight mode. nothing better than an animal. Where is the chance then to allow ideas to be nurtured or dreams to be pursued? That is the way all humans were before we formed societies. Civilisation is very fragile. All it takes is a few decades of chaos for us to forget humanity and turn into animals. Our base natures can take over very fast. We can forget that we are sentient beings, with laws and codes and ethics.

The interstate seems to stretch for miles in a straight line as the fields and farms give way to a more barren landscape. "Loneliness has been good to me' is playing on my personal radio where I hear songs before I write them, and I wonder if this is just another mirage I will forget or if this will become a real song. It has been a long time since I've written a song, and the visits from the muse seem to be lessened by something. I still keep my faith that the muse knows best and whn I am ready the inspiration will be there. I am trying not to look too ready. I know that just invites false promise.

(Acknowledgements) To you, dear reader. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for everything. None of this would have been possible without you. I could write another thousand pages about how grateful I am, and I always will be. But in the end, all I can think to say is that I hope that your dreams, whatever they may be, come true, I hope you pursue those dreams with your whole heart; I hope you work toward them no matter how long it takes, no matter how unlikely the odds. Believe in yourself, and it will carry you farther than you could imagine. You can make it. You will make it. I'm rooting for you.

Money is not about interest or dividends, strategies or schemes. And it’s not about power or prestige or control. Money is just a tool. A tool used to pursue your dreams – those dreams you keep talking about.

From eating at El Pollo Loco salsa bar to the Golden Globes buffet, I managed to stumble through this journey with the perseverance of an immigrant and the mindset of an American. I learned to thrive on being uncomfortable to pursue what I loved. The English language was uncomfortable, so I studied BET until it became my natural tongue. Doing stand-up was uncomfortable, so I hung out at the Comedy Palace until it became my second home. Auditions were uncomfortable, so I spent six hundred bucks a month on acting classes while I slept in some dude's living room for three hundred bucks until acting became my profession. I never looked at these challenges as barriers; I saw them as opportunities to grow. I'd rather try to pursue my dream knowing that I might fail miserably than to have never tried at all. That is How to American.

I don't want to become obsessed with work or money or change any of the values I have now. I don't have reason to believe that I ever should change, as much as I have this feeling of urgency to pursue my dreams...

This year I turn 40, still single, but filled with a sense of wholeness and completeness that I have never felt before. I am unafraid to chase my passions, pursue my dreams, and conquer even the tallest of mountains.

My concern with democracy is highly specific. It begins in observing the remarkable fact that, while democracy means a government accountable to the electorate, our rulers now make us accountable to them. Most Western governments hate me smoking, or eating the wrong kind of food, or hunting foxes, or drinking too much, and these are merely the surface disapprovals, the ones that provoke legislation or public campaigns. We also borrow too much money for our personal pleasures, and many of us are very bad parents. Ministers of state have been known to instruct us in elementary matters, such as the importance of reading stories to our children. Again, many of us have unsound views about people of other races, cultures, or religions, and the distribution of our friends does not always correspond, as governments think that it ought, to the cultural diversity of our society. We must face up to the grim fact that the rulers we elect are losing patience with us. No philosopher can contemplate this interesting situation without beginning to reflect on what it can mean. The gap between political realities and their public face is so great that the term “paradox” tends to crop up from sentence to sentence. Our rulers are theoretically “our” representatives, but they are busy turning us into the instruments of the projects they keep dreaming up. The business of governments, one might think, is to supply the framework of law within which we may pursue happiness on our own account. Instead, we are constantly being summoned to reform ourselves. Debt, intemperance, and incompetence in rearing our children are no doubt regrettable, but they are vices, and left alone, they will soon lead to the pain that corrects. Life is a better teacher of virtue than politicians, and most sensible governments in the past left moral faults to the churches. But democratic citizenship in the twenty-first century means receiving a stream of improving “messages” from politicians. Some may forgive these intrusions because they are so well intentioned. Who would defend prejudice, debt, or excessive drinking? The point, however, is that our rulers have no business telling us how to live. They are tiresome enough in their exercise of authority—they are intolerable when they mount the pulpit. Nor should we be in any doubt that nationalizing the moral life is the first step towards totalitarianism. We might perhaps be more tolerant of rulers turning preachers if they were moral giants. But what citizen looks at the government today thinking how wise and virtuous it is? Public respect for politicians has long been declining, even as the population at large has been seduced into demanding political solutions to social problems. To demand help from officials we rather despise argues for a notable lack of logic in the demos. The statesmen of eras past have been replaced by a set of barely competent social workers eager to take over the risks of our everyday life. The electorates of earlier times would have responded to politicians seeking to bribe us with such promises with derision. Today, the demos votes for them.

It is not true that people stop pursuing dreams because they grow old. They grow old because they stop pursuing dreams. —GABRIEL “GABITO” GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ, Colombian novelist and recipient of the 1982 Nobel Prize in Literature

Leaders instill courage in the hearts of those who follow. This rarely happens through words alone. It generally requires action. It goes back to what we said earlier: Somebody has to go first. By going first, the leader furnishes confidence to those who follow. As a next generation leader, you will be called upon to go first. That will require courage. But in stepping out you will give the gift of courage to those who are watching. What do I believe is impossible to do in my field, but if it could be done would fundamentally change my business? What has been done is safe. But to attempt a solution to a problem that plagues an entire industry - in my case, the local church - requires courage. Unsolved problems are gateways to the future. To those who have the courage to ask the question and the tenacity to hang on until they discover or create an answer belongs the future. Don’t allow the many good opportunities to divert your attention from the one opportunity that has the greatest potential. Learn to say no. There will always be more opportunities than there is time to pursue them. Leaders worth following are willing to face and embrace current reality regardless of how discouraging or embarrassing it might be. It is impossible to generate sustained growth or progress if your plan for the future is not rooted in reality. Be willing to face the truth regardless of how painful it might be. If fear causes you to retreat from your dreams, you will never give the world anything new. it is impossible to lead without a dream. When leaders are no longer willing to dream, it is only a short time before followers are unwilling to follow. Will I allow my fear to bind me to mediocrity? Uncertainty is a permanent part of the leadership landscape. It never goes away. Where there is no uncertainty, there is no longer the need for leadership. The greater the uncertainty, the greater the need for leadership. Your capacity as a leader will be determined by how well you learn to deal with uncertainty. My enemy is not uncertainty. It is not even my responsibility to remove the uncertainty. It is my responsibility to bring clarity into the midst of the uncertainty. As leaders we can afford to be uncertain, but we cannot afford to be unclear. People will follow you in spite of a few bad decisions. People will not follow you if you are unclear in your instruction. As a leader you must develop the elusive skill of leading confidently and purposefully onto uncertain terrain. Next generation leaders must fear a lack of clarity more than a lack of accuracy. The individual in your organization who communicates the clearest vision will often be perceived as the leader. Clarity is perceived as leadership. Uncertainty exposes a lack of knowledge. Pretending exposes a lack of character. Express your uncertainty with confidence. You will never maximize your potential in any area without coaching. It is impossible. Self-evaluation is helpful, but evaluation from someone else is essential. You need a leadership coach. Great leaders are great learners. God, in His wisdom, has placed men and women around us with the experience and discernment we often lack. Experience alone doesn’t make you better at anything. Evaluated experience is what enables you to improve your performance. As a leader, what you don’t know can hurt you. What you don’t know about yourself can put a lid on your leadership. You owe it to yourself and to those who have chosen to follow you to open the doors to evaluation. Engage a coach. Success doesn’t make anything of consequence easier. Success just raises the stakes. Success brings with it the unanticipated pressure of maintaining success. The more successful you are as a leader, the more difficult this becomes. There is far more pressure at the top of an organization than you might imagine.

The inherent mystery itself: that elusive brightness that flows out of dreams; the brightness that, when we awaken, is already fading from our minds—I still pursued it almost every morning, in spite of my many hours of tortured sleep.

God, was I being too selfish? I could feel my eyes stinging . . . and my resolve crumbling. “Well, Lizzie. It sounds as if you have a decision to make,” my dad said with a sigh. “Dad . . . if you tell me to take this job, I will.” My dad just looked at me for a moment, considering. “Do you want this job?” “No!” I sniffled. “It would be terrible. But if you need me to—” “Then don’t you dare.” His words came out fierce—fiercer than I’ve ever heard in my entire life. “Your mother’s and my financial problems are our own. You don’t get to carry that burden. You’ll have your own as soon as your student loans come due, so don’t worry about us.” “But—” “You have dreams, Lizzie.” He laid a hand on my shoulder. “Goals. Now is the time in your life to pursue them. Don’t put them on hold. Because if you do, pretty soon you’ll be middle-aged with three children, working a job simply to pay the bills. And you’ll have forgotten what those dreams were.

When Hillary Clinton’s book What Happened came out, I learned she’d quoted my final paragraph: On nights when you feel alone, I am with you . . . Then she wrote: Early on the morning of November 9, when it came time to decide on what I’d say in my concession speech, I remembered those words. Inspired by them, I wrote these: “To all the little girls watching this, never doubt that you are valuable and powerful and deserving of every chance and opportunity in the world to pursue and achieve your own dreams.” Wherever she is, I hope Emily Doe knows how much her words and her strength meant to so many. At a moment of monumental loss, she had consulted the statement for hope. She had returned to my darkest place to light the way forward. 13.

My heart is a traitor,' the boy said to the alchemist, when they had paused to rest the horses. 'It doesn't want me to go on.' 'That makes sense,' the alchemist answered. 'Naturally it's afraid that, in pursuing your dream, you might lose everything you've won.

That done, I sank into an uneasy sleep wherein I dreamed of an assembly line of pale, bloodless girls walking down an endless dark street and moaning softly for help. Somewhere, toward the edge of my inner vision, a shadowy figure pursued them with long, beckoning arms. Goddamn booze! Somewhere in the midst of this ghoulish girl parade Cairncross materialized and hung a garland of garlic around my neck, glaring at me with his good eye and intoning, 'Go and sin no more.' Vincenzo appeared at Cairncross' side and together they laughed insanely, then vanished in a puff of sulphurous smoke. I made several high-minded resolutions, muttered half-heard but sincere-sounding prayers to all the recently deposed saints, thrashed and rolled clean off the bed. I might just as well have stayed up.

They say that soulmates are like dreams: you own them without truly having them. I used to doubt this notion until you departed from my life's story. It then became clear that I had been pursuing something as elusive as a mirage, a kite whose string was held by someone else

Most churches do not grow beyond the spiritual health of their leadership. Many churches have a pastor who is trying to lead people to a Savior he has yet to personally encounter. If spiritual gifting is no proof of authentic faith, then certainly a job title isn't either. You must have a clear sense of calling before you enter ministry. Being a called man is a lonely job, and many times you feel like God has abandoned you in your ministry. Ministry is more than hard. Ministry is impossible. And unless we have a fire inside our bones compelling us, we simply will not survive. Pastoral ministry is a calling, not a career. It is not a job you pursue. If you don’t think demons are real, try planting a church! You won’t get very far in advancing God’s kingdom without feeling resistance from the enemy. If I fail to spend two hours in prayer each morning, the devil gets the victory through the day. Once a month I get away for the day, once a quarter I try to get out for two days, and once a year I try to get away for a week. The purpose of these times is rest, relaxation, and solitude with God. A pastor must always be fearless before his critics and fearful before his God. Let us tremble at the thought of neglecting the sheep. Remember that when Christ judges us, he will judge us with a special degree of strictness. The only way you will endure in ministry is if you determine to do so through the prevailing power of the Holy Spirit. The unsexy reality of the pastorate is that it involves hard work—the heavy-lifting, curse-ridden, unyielding employment of your whole person for the sake of the church. Pastoral ministry requires dogged, unyielding determination, and determination can only come from one source—God himself. Passive staff members must be motivated. Erring elders and deacons must be confronted. Divisive church members must be rebuked. Nobody enjoys doing such things (if you do, you should be not be a pastor!), but they are necessary in order to have a healthy church over the long haul. If you allow passivity, laziness, and sin to fester, you will soon despise the church you pastor. From the beginning of sacred Scripture (Gen. 2:17) to the end (Rev. 21:8), the penalty for sin is death. Therefore, if we sin, we should die. But it is Jesus, the sinless one, who dies in our place for our sins. The good news of the gospel is that Jesus died to take to himself the penalty of our sin. The Bible is not Christ-centered because it is generally about Jesus. It is Christ-centered because the Bible’s primary purpose, from beginning to end, is to point us toward the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus for the salvation and sanctification of sinners. Christ-centered preaching goes much further than merely providing suggestions for how to live; it points us to the very source of life and wisdom and explains how and why we have access to him. Felt needs are set into the context of the gospel, so that the Christian message is not reduced to making us feel better about ourselves. If you do not know how sinful you are, you feel no need of salvation. Sin-exposing preaching helps people come face-to-face with their sin and their great need for a Savior. We can worship in heaven, and we can talk to God in heaven, and we can read our Bibles in heaven, but we can’t share the gospel with our lost friends in heaven. “Would your city weep if your church did not exist?” It was crystal-clear for me. Somehow, through fear or insecurity, I had let my dreams for our church shrink. I had stopped thinking about the limitless things God could do and had been distracted by my own limitations. I prayed right there that God would forgive me of my small-mindedness. I asked God to forgive my lack of faith that God could use a man like me to bring the message of the gospel through our missionary church to our lost city. I begged God to renew my heart and mind with a vision for our city that was more like Christ's.

Without ruining the ending, the gist is that he’s a gay reindeer who can’t afford a nose job, but he becomes a superstar in the end. It’s all very inspirational. It turns out that, just like Rudolph, what I initially considered to be such a negative is, in fact, the very thing that has made me stand out. Not to sound preachy, but accepting my voice has given me the confidence I’ve needed to pursue my dreams. And just like Seal rocks his facial scars, Cindy Crawford works her mole, and Barbra Streisand wins every race by a nose, I hope you’re inspired to make the most of your possibly less-than-perfect trademark, too.

My one small hope for you today is this: don't let life happen to you. What I mean by that is, don't just exist in the space you occupy — I hope you really, truly live. When you wake up, I hope that you are grateful for a fresh start. I hope you notice your breath go in and out, and I hope you feel lucky to be alive. And then I hope you step outside and notice the way saying hello to a stranger can make a smile reach their eyes. I hope that you actively choose, in every passing moment, to reach for what ignites a fire inside of you. If it is a dream: pursue it relentlessly. If it is a love: make sure they know you care. Whatever you're doing, wherever you are — I hope you do it with all of your heart.

Don't let a bad day ruin your week, a bad week ruin your month, a bad month ruin your year, or a bad year ruin your life. Your future doesn't have to be a reflection of your past. Make new choices, take risks and pursue what sets your heart on fire. "My past does NOT equal my future" repeat that when you feel like giving up. There is always a tomorrow.

Why do we have to listen to our hearts?” the boy asked, when they had made camp that day. “Because, wherever your heart is, that is where you'll find your treasure.” “But my heart is agitated,” the boy said. “It has its dreams, it gets emotional, and it's become passionate over a woman of the desert. It asks things of me, and it keeps me from sleeping many nights, when I'm thinking about her.” “Well, that's good. Your heart is alive. Keep listening to what it has to say.” . . . “My heart is a traitor,” the boy said to the alchemist, when they had paused to rest the horses. “it doesn't want me to go on.” “That makes sense,” the alchemist answered. “Naturally it's afraid that, in pursuing your dream, you might lose everything you've won.” “Well then, why should I listen to my heart?” “Because you will never again be able to keep it quiet. Even if you pretend not to have heard what it tells you, it will always be there inside you, repeating to you what you're thinking about life and about the world.” “You mean I should listen, even if it's treasonous?” “Treason is a blow that comes unexpectedly. If you know your heart well, it will never be able to do that to you. Because you'll know it's dreams and wishes, and will know how to deal with them.” “You will never be able to escape from your heart. So it's better to listen to what it has to say. That way, you'll never have to fear an unexpected blow.

If you want to maximize minimal potential and become great in any field, you must embrace your savage side and become imbalanced, at least for a period of time. You'll need to funnel every minute of every single day into the pursuit of that degree, that starting spot, that job, that edge. Your mind must never leave the cockpit. Sleep at the library or the office. Hoop long past sundown and fall asleep watching film of your next opponent. There are no days off, and there is no downtime when you are obsessed with being great. That is what it takes to be the baddest motherfucker ever at what you do. Know that your dedication will be misunderstood. Some relationships may break down. The savage is not a socialized beast, and an imbalanced lifestyle often appears selfish from the outside. But the reason I've been able to help so many people with my life story is precisely because I embraced being that imbalanced while I pursued the impossible dream of becoming the hardest motherfucker ever. That's a mythical title, but it became my compass bearing, my North Star. p111

Your countrymen owe you their freedom and their security. They sleep safely at night and pursue their dreams during the day because you stand the watch and protect them...You are the best America has to offer. My admiration and affection for yo is with limit, and I will think about you and your families and pray for you every day for the rest of my life. God Bless you.

In my experience, success has three essential ingredients: a passionate commitment to your goal, the courage to dream and to take risks, and the moral and intellectual character to realize the dreams worth pursuing and the best route to take to achieve them. Commitment, courage, character — a powerful combination of qualities that I believe you will find in every truly accomplished person.

THE RIGHT AND WRONG PICTURE OF A DREAM I’ve studied successful people for almost forty years. I’ve known hundreds of high-profile people who achieved big dreams. And I’ve achieved a few dreams of my own. What I’ve discovered is that a lot of people have misconceptions about dreams. Take a look at many of the things that people pursue and call dreams in their lives: Daydreams—Distractions from Current Work Pie-in-the-Sky Dreams—Wild Ideas with No Strategy or Basis in Reality Bad Dreams—Worries that Breed Fear and Paralysis Idealistic Dreams—The Way the World Would Be If You Were in Charge Vicarious Dreams—Dreams Lived Through Others Romantic Dreams—Belief that Some Person Will Make You Happy Career Dreams—Belief that Career Success Will Make You Happy Destination Dreams—Belief that a Position, Title, or Award Will Make You Happy Material Dreams—Belief that Wealth or Possessions Will Make You Happy If these aren’t good dreams—valid ones worthy of a person’s life—then what are? Here is my definition of a dream that can be put to the test and pass: a dream is an inspiring picture of the future that energizes your mind, will, and emotions, empowering you to do everything you can to achieve it.

What would you do to me if we married? Would you let me pursue my dreams? Would you leave me at home to raise the children while you worked? Would you love me? Would you own me? Would you beat me? She could have asked those questions aloud, but she knew people only told you want you wanted to hear. That to understand someone, you had to listen to the words they didn't say, had to watch them closely.

The day before I stepped down as secretary, I sent a message to every man and woman wearing the American military uniform because I knew I could not speak to or about them at my farewell ceremony without breaking down. I repeated my now-familiar words: “Your countrymen owe you their freedom and their security. They sleep safely at night and pursue their dreams during the day because you stand the watch and protect them.… You are the best America has to offer. My admiration and affection for you is without limit, and I will think about you and your families and pray for you every day for the rest of my life. God bless you.” I am eligible to be buried at Arlington National Cemetery. I have asked to be buried in Section 60, where so many of the fallen from Iraq and Afghanistan have been laid to rest. The greatest honor possible would be to rest among my heroes for all eternity.

One part of my life was given over to the service of destruction; it belonged to hate, to enmity, to killing. But life remained in me. And that in itself is enough, of itself almost a purpose and a way. I will work in myself and be ready; I will bestir my hands and my thoughts. I will not take myself very seriously, nor push on when sometimes I should like to be still. There are many things to be built and almost everything to repair; it is enough that I work to dig out again what was buried during the years of shells and machine guns. Not every one need be a pioneer; there is employment for feebler hands, lesser powers. It is there I mean to look for my place. Then the dead will be silenced and the past not pursue me any more; it will assist me instead. How simple it is—but how long it has taken to arrive there! And I might still be wandering in the wilderness, have fallen victim to the wire snares and the detonators, had Ludwig’s death not gone up before us like a rocket, lighting to us the way. We despaired when we saw how that great stream of feeling common to us all—that will to a new life shorn of follies, a life recaptured on the confines of death—did not sweep away before it all survived half-truth and self-interest, so to make a new course for itself, but instead of that merely trickled away in the marshes of forgetfulness, was lost among the bogs of fine phrases, and dribbled away along the ditches of social activities, of cares and occupations. But to-day I know that all life is perhaps only a getting ready, a ferment in the individual, in many cells, in many channels, each for himself; and if the cells and channels of a tree but take up and carry farther the onward urging sap, there will emerge at the last rustling and sunlit branches—crowns of leaves and freedom. I will begin. It will not be that consummation of which we dreamed in our youth and that we expected after the years out there. It will be a road like other roads, with stones and good stretches, with places torn up, with villages and fields—a road of toil. And I shall be alone. Perhaps sometimes I shall find some one to go with me a stage of the journey—but for all of it, probably no one. And I may often have to hump my pack still, when my shoulders are already weary; often hesitate at the crossways and boundaries; often have to leave something behind me, often stumble and fall. But I will get up again and not just lie there; I will go on and not look back. —Perhaps I shall never be really happy again; perhaps the war has destroyed that, and no doubt I shall always be a little inattentive and nowhere quite at home—but I shall probably never be wholly unhappy either—for something will always be there to sustain me, be it merely my own hands, or a tree, or the breathing earth. The

At first glance, young John Adams’s obsession with recognition seems odd. In contrast to the great mass of his contemporaries, his yearning was exceptional. Yet when Adams is compared to other high achievers of his generation, his behavior appears more normal. Young Washington sought recognition just as fervently, and he impatiently pursued a commission in the British army during the French and Indian War as the most rapid means of procuring attention. The youthful Thomas Jefferson dreamed of someday sitting on the King’s Council in Virginia, while Alexander Hamilton, born too late to soldier in the war in the 1750s, announced: “I contemn the grovling and condition of a Clerk or the like, to which my Fortune, &c., contemns me.” He wished for war, through which he could be catapulted into notoriety; his hero was James Wolfe, the British general who died in the assault on Quebec in 1759. Benjamin Franklin, who grew up earlier in Boston, exhibited the same industriousness and ambition that Adams would evince. He mapped out an extensive regimen of self-improvement, as did Adams, and found his role models in Jesus and Socrates. Adams, and many others who would subsequently play an important role in the affairs of early America, were the sort of men that historian Douglass Adair aptly describes as “passionately selfish and self-interested,” men who shared a common attribute, a love of fame.23

It is the fight for control that has us all tied up, while it’s really an illusion anyway. We control because we are afraid of what may happen if we let go. Do we really think we are better captains of our lives than a God who sees everything and deeply loves us? So we pursue our scrapbook dreams, distracted, too busy to see he’s already with us and has our steps planned. The days and pictures and people he puts in our scrapbooks are seemingly chaotic but perfectly planned.

Imagine trying to hold the tail of a comet as it blazes across the heavens. It’s burning your hands, eating you up, but there’s no malice in it; a comet can’t possibly know or care about you. You will sacrifice all you are or ever will be for that comet because it suffuses every inch of your skin with a sweet itch you cannot scratch, and through its grace you discover velocities you never dreamed possible. You will love that comet, but part of that love—a percentage impossible to calibrate—is tied to your inability to understand it. How can that comet burn as it does, pursue the trajectory it does? It confuses you, because the comet disguises itself as a human girl. But make no mistake, the girl contains fire to evaporate oceans, light to blind minor gods. If I could freeze her in the heartbeat where she skipped across the footbridge, carve her out of time and fix her in the firmament . . . in the deepest chambers of my heart, I know that nobody, not another soul on earth, will ever be as purely astonishing as Dove Yellowbird was in that moment.

How happy some o’er other some can be! Through Athens I am thought as fair as she. But what of that? Demetrius thinks not so; He will not know what all but he do know. And as he errs, doting on Hermia’s eyes, So I, admiring of his qualities. Things base and vile, holding no quantity, Love can transpose to form and dignity. Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind; And therefore is wing’d Cupid painted blind. Nor hath love’s mind of any judgment taste. Wings, and no eyes, figure unheedy haste. And therefore is love said to be a child, Because in choice he is so oft beguil’d. As waggish boys in game themselves forswear, So the boy Love is perjur’d everywhere. For, ere Demetrius look’d on Hermia’s eyne, He hail’d down oaths that he was only mine; And when this hail some heat from Hermia felt, So he dissolv’d, and showers of oaths did melt. I will go tell him of fair Hermia’s flight. Then to the wood will he tomorrow night Pursue her; and for this intelligence If I have thanks, it is a dear expense. But herein mean I to enrich my pain, To have his sight thither and back again

Who is Mr. Jasper?" Rosa turned aside her head in answering: "Eddy's uncle, and my music-master." "You do not love him?" "Ugh!" She put her hands up to her face, and shook with fear or horror. "You know that he loves you?" "O, don't, don't, don't!" cried Rosa, dropping on her knees, and clinging to her new resource. "Don't tell me of it! He terrifies me. He haunts my thoughts, like a dreadful ghost. I feel that I am never safe from him. I feel as if he could pass in through the wall when he is spoken of." She actually did look round, as if she dreaded to see him standing in the shadow behind her. "Try to tell me more about it, darling." "Yes, I will, I will. Because you are so strong. But hold me the while, and stay with me afterwards." "My child! You speak as if he had threatened you in some dark way." "He has never spoken to me about - that. Never." "What has he done?" "He has made a slave of me with his looks. He has forced me to understand him, without his saying a word; and he has forced me to keep silence, without his uttering a threat. When I play, he never moves his eyes from my hands. When I sing, he never moves his eyes from my lips. When he corrects me, and strikes a note, or a chord, or plays a passage, he himself is in the sounds, whispering that he pursues me as a lover, and commanding me to keep his secret. I avoid his eyes, but he forces me to see them without looking at them. Even when a glaze comes over them (which is sometimes the case), and he seems to wander away into a frightful sort of dream in which he threatens most, he obliges me to know it, and to know that he is sitting close at my side, more terrible to me than ever." "What is this imagined threatening, pretty one? What is threatened?" "I don't know. I have never even dared to think or wonder what it is." "And was this all, to-night?" "This was all; except that to-night when he watched my lips so closely as I was singing, besides feeling terrified I felt ashamed and passionately hurt. It was as if he kissed me, and I couldn't bear it, but cried out. You must never breathe this to any one. Eddy is devoted to him. But you said to-night that you would not be afraid of him, under any circumstances, and that gives me - who am so much afraid of him - courage to tell only you. Hold me! Stay with me! I am too frightened to be left by myself.

I like you pretty okay as you are,” Rusty conceded. “I remember when you were just Angie’s friend who I vaguely thought might be high on cough syrup all the time. But then I saw how you were with Angela, and what you meant to her. I saw your home, the warmth of it, how different it was from mine, how much I wanted a home like that for Angela. I loved you, and the thought of all that came with you. I wanted to make that love mean something. For the first time in my life, I wanted to do something, and I wanted what I did to matter. I wanted to take what I felt for you and build something beautiful.” Kami glanced nervously up at his face. “That’s, um, that means a lot to me, but you have to know I’m not looking to settle down and build a home with anyone until my mid-thirties, if ever, because I am going to be pursuing my career as a hard-hitting reporter.” Rusty smacked her lightly on the top of her head. “You were a beautiful dream to me, you brat; please cease inserting your unpleasant and hurtful reality into my dream. It was the kind of dream that’s not supposed to come true. It was the kind of dream that does something else. It taught me who I wanted to be.

As we drove off into the moonless night, raindrops danced through our headlights like the fireflies of my childhood. I silently cursed the frailty of happiness and doubted whether it ever existed for me. I could remember happier times, though, and those memories fluttered about my mind like fireflies, beckoning with their elusive splendor. But chasing memories held no more promise than catching fireflies. The pursued feelings either vanished or lost their magic upon examination, hardly the green-glowing beauty seen at a distance. So I looked ahead of me and dreamed on into the darkness, hoping to one day find someone who would love me.

Calf-deep in the soothing water I indulge myself in the wishful vision. I am not unaware of what such daydreams signify, dreams of becoming an unthinking savage, of taking the cold road back to the capital, of groping my way out to the ruins in the desert, of returning to the confinement of my cell, of seeking out the barbarians and offering myself to them to use as they wish. Without exception they are dreams of ends: dreams not of how to live but of how to die. And everyone, I know, in that walled town sinking now into darkness (I hear the two thin trumpet calls that announce the closing of the gates) is similarly preoccupied. What has made it impossible for us to live in time like fish in the water, like birds in air, like children? It is the fault of Empire! Empire has created the time of history. Empire has located its existence not in the smooth recurrent spinning time of the cycle of the seasons but in the jagged time of rise and fall, of beginning and end, of catastrophe. Empire dooms itself to live in history and plot against history. One thought alone preoccupies the submerged mind of Empire: how not to end, how not to die, how to prolong its era. By day it pursues its enemies. It is cunning and ruthless, it sends its bloodhounds everywhere. By night it feeds on images of disaster: the sack of cities, the rape of populations, pyramids of bones, acres of desolation. A mad vision yet a virulent one: I, wading in the ooze, am no less infected with it than the faithful Colonel Joll as he tracks the enemies of Empire through the boundless desert, sword unsheathed to cut down barbarian after barbarian until at last he finds and slays the one whose destiny it should be (or if not his then his son's or unborn grandson's) to climb the bronze gateway to the Summer Palace and topple the globe surmounted by the tiger rampant that symbolizes eternal domination, while his comrades below cheer and fire their muskets in the air.

What kind of regrets? For me, very few books cause tears, much less require a handkerchief, but Bronnie Ware’s 2012 book The Top Five Regrets of the Dying did both. Ware spent many years caring for those facing their own mortality. When she questioned the dying about any regrets they had or anything they would do differently, Bronnie found that common themes surfaced again and again. The five most common were these: I wish that I’d let myself be happier—too late they realized happiness is a choice; I wish I’d stayed in touch with my friends—too often they failed to give them the time and effort they deserved; I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings—too frequently shut mouths and shuttered feelings weighed too heavy to handle; I wish I hadn’t worked so hard—too much time spent making a living over building a life caused too much remorse. As tough as these were, one stood out above them all. The most common regret was this: I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself not the life others expected of me. Half-filled dreams and unfulfilled hopes: this was the number-one regret expressed by the dying. As Ware put it, “Most people had not honored even a half of their dreams and had to die knowing that it was due to choices they had made, or not made.” Bronnie Ware’s observations aren’t hers alone. At the conclusion of their exhaustive research, Gilovich and Medvec in 1994 wrote, “When people look back on their lives, it is the things they have not done that generate the greatest regret.... People’s actions may be troublesome initially; it is their inactions that plague them most with long-term feelings of regret.” Honoring our hopes and pursuing productive lives through faith in our purpose and priorities is the message from our elders. From the wisest position they’ll ever have comes their clearest message. No regrets. So make sure every day you do what matters most. When you know what matters most, everything makes sense. When you don’t know what matters most, anything makes sense. The best lives aren’t led this way.

I love helping people fulfill their dreams, but I also want to revive some of my old dreams as well. Dr. Dale E. Turner once wrote, “Dreams are renewable. No matter what our age or condition, there are still untapped possibilities within us and new beauty waiting to be born.” As a kid, I had a lot of dreams. I wanted to be an explorer, an Oscar-winning leading man, a rock guitarist/singer. But I got into a groove and I began to let those dreams go and accept they weren’t going to happen. Now, I think I’ve reached a point where I want to quench the thirst of all my dreams. If they don’t come to fruition in the exact way I envisioned them, that’s okay. I at least want to pursue them.

I adopted all the expedients that would naturally occur to a young medical man to end these enervating experiences, but without avail. I dieted. I exercised. I would get up and dress, go out either on foot or in my car, in spite of a strong fear resistance. Fear pursued me out of those dreams. The nightmare quality hung about me and could not be shaken off. I was awake and still dreaming. Never have I seen such sinister skies as I did on those night excursions. I felt such a dread of unfamiliar shadows as I had not known even in childhood. There were times on those nocturnal drives when I could have shouted aloud for daylight as a man suffocating in a closed chamber might shout for air.

And growth has no end. One part of my life was given over to the service of destruction; it belonged to hate, to enmity, to killing. But life remained in me. And that in itself is enough, of itself almost a purpose and a way. I will work in myself and be ready; I will bestir my hands and my thoughts. I will not take myself very seriously, nor push on when sometimes I should like to be still. There are many things to be built and almost everything to repair; it is enough that I work to dig out again what was buried during the years of shells and machine guns. Not every one need be a pioneer; there is employment for feebler hands, lesser powers. It is there I mean to look for my place. Then the dead will be silenced and the past not pursue me any more; it will assist me instead. How simple it is—but how long it has taken to arrive there! And I might still be wandering in the wilderness, have fallen victim to the wire snares and the detonators, had Ludwig’s death not gone up before us like a rocket, lighting to us the way. We despaired when we saw how that great stream of feeling common to us all—that will to a new life shorn of follies, a life recaptured on the confines of death—did not sweep away before it all survived half-truth and self-interest, so to make a new course for itself, but instead of that merely trickled away in the marshes of forgetfulness, was lost among the bogs of fine phrases, and dribbled away along the ditches of social activities, of cares and occupations. But to-day I know that all life is perhaps only a getting ready, a ferment in the individual, in many cells, in many channels, each for himself; and if the cells and channels of a tree but take up and carry farther the onward urging sap, there will emerge at the last rustling and sunlit branches—crowns of leaves and freedom. I will begin. It will not be that consummation of which we dreamed in our youth and that we expected after the years out there. It will be a road like other roads, with stones and good stretches, with places torn up, with villages and fields—a road of toil. And I shall be alone. Perhaps sometimes I shall find some one to go with me a stage of the journey—but for all of it, probably no one. And I may often have to hump my pack still, when my shoulders are already weary; often hesitate at the crossways and boundaries; often have to leave something behind me, often stumble and fall. But I will get up again and not just lie there; I will go on and not look back. —Perhaps I shall never be really happy again; perhaps the war has destroyed that, and no doubt I shall always be a little inattentive and nowhere quite at home—but I shall probably never be wholly unhappy either—for something will always be there to sustain me, be it merely my own hands, or a tree, or the breathing earth. The

And so now you will get rid of me? Overnight? Like that? After thirteen years?” “I am confused by you. I can’t follow you. What exactly is happening here today? It’s not I but you who proposed this ultimatum out of the fucking blue. It’s you who presented me with the either/or. It’s you who is getting rid of me overnight . . . unless, of course, I consent to become overnight a sexual creature of the kind I am not and never have been. Follow me, please. I must become a sexual creature of the kind that you have yourself never dreamed of being. In order to preserve what we have remarkably sustained by forthrightly pursuing together our sexual desires—are you with me?—my sexual desires must be deformed, since it is unarguable that, like you—you until today, that is—I am not by nature, inclination, practice, or belief a monogamous being. Period. You wish to impose a condition that either deforms me or turns me into a dishonest man with you. But like all other living creatures I suffer when I am deformed. And it shocks me, I might add, to think that the forthrightness that has sustained and excited us both, that provides such a healthy contrast to the routine deceitfulness that is the hallmark of a hundred million marriages, including yours and mine, is now less to your taste than the solace of conventional lies and repressive puritanism. As a self-imposed challenge, repressive puritanism is fine with me, but it is Titoism, Drenka, inhuman Titoism, when it seeks to impose its norms on others by self-righteously suppressing the satanic side of sex.

People are afraid to pursue their most important dreams, because they feel that they don’t deserve them, or that they’ll be unable to achieve them. We, their hearts, become fearful just thinking of loved ones who go away forever, or of moments that could have been good but weren’t, or of treasures that might have been found but were forever hidden in the sands. Because, when these things happen, we suffer terribly.” “My heart is afraid that it will have to suffer,” the boy told the alchemist one night as they looked up at the moonless sky. “Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams, because every second of the search is a second’s encounter with God and with eternity.

That morning, while Albertine was sleeping and I was trying to guess at her hidden feelings, I received a letter from my mother in which she expressed her uneasiness at knowing nothing of my intentions, using this remark of Mme de Sévigné’s: “I believe that he will not take a wife; but why then trouble this girl whom he will never marry? Why risk prompting her to refuse matches that she will come to look on with disdain? Why disturb the mind of a person whom he could so easily avoid?” My mother’s letter brought me back to earth. Why am I searching out a mysterious soul, I thought, interpreting a face, feeling surrounded by forebodings which I dare not pursue? I have been dreaming, things are simple. I am an irresolute young man, this is one of those marriages that may or may not happen, it will take time to decide.

I love sitting back and taking a look behind, just to see how far I've come. To view how things have unfolded by one simple move I made almost 18yrs ago. If I shall succeed in my dream to further this that I have started, then I shall not stop until I reach the end. But then I stand only to wonder? Why should I give up at all in trying to pursue a dream that quite frankly could be the making of something amazing, something that most likely, if should fail, will place me right in the path of something else. So I shan't give up, because I have come this far and because I know, in my heart, that it's landing me somewhere truely amazing, and I'm excited to see where it goes. Faith doesn't always start in Religion, it starts inside you. And if you have enough of it in yourself, then who's to say what you can accomplish.

Nonconformity is an affront to those in the mainstream. Our impulse is to dismiss this lifestyle, create reasons why it can’t work, why it doesn’t even warrant consideration. Why not? Living outdoors is cheap and can be afforded by a half year of marginal employment. They can’t buy things that most of us have, but what they lose in possessions, they gain in freedom. In Somerset Maugham’s The Razor’s Edge, lead character Larry returns from the First World War and declares that he would like to “loaf.”23 The term “loafing” inadequately describes the life he would spend traveling, studying, searching for meaning, and even laboring. Larry meets with the disapproval of peers and would-be mentors: “Common sense assured…that if you wanted to get on in this world, you must accept its conventions, and not to do what everybody else did clearly pointed to instability.” Larry had an inheritance that enabled him to live modestly and pursue his dreams. Larry’s acquaintances didn’t fear the consequences of his failure; they feared his failure to conform. I’m no maverick. Upon leaving college I dove into the workforce, eager to have my own stuff and a job to pay for it. Parents approved, bosses gave raises, and my friends could relate. The approval, the comforts, the commitments wound themselves around me like invisible threads. When my life stayed the course, I wouldn’t even feel them binding. Then I would waiver enough to sense the growing entrapment, the taming of my life in which I had been complicit. Working a nine-to-five job took more energy than I had expected, leaving less time to pursue diverse interests. I grew to detest the statement “I am a…” with the sentence completed by an occupational title. Self-help books emphasize “defining priorities” and “staying focused,” euphemisms for specialization and stifling spontaneity. Our vision becomes so narrow that risk is trying a new brand of cereal, and adventure is watching a new sitcom. Over time I have elevated my opinion of nonconformity nearly to the level of an obligation. We should have a bias toward doing activities that we don’t normally do to keep loose the moorings of society. Hiking the AT is “pointless.” What life is not “pointless”? Is it not pointless to work paycheck to paycheck just to conform? Hiking the AT before joining the workforce was an opportunity not taken. Doing it in retirement would be sensible; doing it at this time in my life is abnormal, and therein lay the appeal. I want to make my life less ordinary.

You’re afraid you have no talent. You’re afraid you’ll be rejected or criticized or ridiculed or misunderstood or—worst of all—ignored. You’re afraid there’s no market for your creativity, and therefore no point in pursuing it. You’re afraid somebody else already did it better. You’re afraid everybody else already did it better. You’re afraid somebody will steal your ideas, so it’s safer to keep them hidden forever in the dark. You’re afraid you won’t be taken seriously. You’re afraid your work isn’t politically, emotionally, or artistically important enough to change anyone’s life. You’re afraid your dreams are embarrassing. You’re afraid that someday you’ll look back on your creative endeavors as having been a giant waste of time, effort, and money. You’re afraid you don’t have the right kind of discipline. You’re afraid you don’t have the right kind of work space, or financial freedom, or empty hours in which to focus on invention or exploration. You’re afraid you don’t have the right kind of training or degree. You’re afraid you’re too fat. (I don’t know what this has to do with creativity, exactly, but experience has taught me that most of us are afraid we’re too fat, so let’s just put that on the anxiety list, for good measure.) You’re afraid of being exposed as a hack, or a fool, or a dilettante, or a narcissist. You’re afraid of upsetting your family with what you may reveal. You’re afraid of what your peers and coworkers will say if you express your personal truth aloud. You’re afraid of unleashing your innermost demons, and you really don’t want to encounter your innermost demons. You’re afraid your best work is behind you. You’re afraid you never had any best work to begin with. You’re afraid you neglected your creativity for so long that now you can never get it back. You’re afraid you’re too old to start. You’re afraid you’re too young to start. You’re afraid because something went well in your life once, so obviously nothing can ever go well again. You’re afraid because nothing has ever gone well in your life, so why bother trying? You’re afraid of being a one-hit wonder. You’re afraid of being a no-hit wonder . . . Listen, I don’t have all day here, so I’m not going to keep listing fears. It’s a bottomless list, anyhow, and a depressing one. I’ll just wrap up my summary this way: SCARY, SCARY, SCARY. Everything is so goddamn scary. Defending Your Weakness Please understand that the only reason I can speak so authoritatively about fear is that I know it so intimately.

For me, real strength is going through an adverse childhood and sticking to your dreams. It’s your family telling you they won’t help you pay for your education and refusing to give up. It’s pursuing that education with the constant stress of a difficult home life. It’s not having an inherent support system and creating one for yourself. It’s experiencing the worst time in your life and hoping tomorrow will be better. It’s looking death straight in the face and saying, “Not today.” It’s calling for help when you know you need it the most. It’s making difficult decisions when you know whichever you choose will result in judgment. It’s rebuilding your life after it feels like it fell apart. It’s hearing some of your very best friends say to you they want nothing to do with you and telling them, “I understand.” Real strength, my friends, is not giving up.

When people first started realizing that Zo and I were dating, Hollywood Hannah referred to me as “the biggest Kardashian.” I thought that was so cruel. Not only to me but to Khloe. I understood the reference. Khloe has worked hard to have a strong, healthy body, but when you see her standing beside her sisters, she is and will probably always be the biggest Kardashian. Like me, she’ll never be tiny. My relationship with food is more complicated than any relationship I’ve had with a man. My feelings drive me into binges or starvation. In counseling, I sorted out what food should be to me. It’s for nutrition. Not to make me feel better. It’s not comfort. It’s not a companion to make me feel less lonely. It is not a friend I celebrate special occasions with. It is fuel. It oils my engine so I can live my best life. So I can pursue my dreams. So I can make this world a better place.

My heart is a traitor,” the boy said to the alchemist, when they had paused to rest the horses. “It doesn’t want me to go on.” “That makes sense,” the alchemist answered. “Naturally it’s afraid that, in pursuing your dream, you might lose everything you’ve won.” “Well, then, why should I listen to my heart?” “Because you will never again be able to keep it quiet. Even if you pretend not to have heard what it tells you, it will always be there inside you, repeating to you what you’re thinking about life and about the world.” “You mean I should listen, even if it’s treasonous?” “Treason is a blow that comes unexpectedly. If you know your heart well, it will never be able to do that to you. Because you’ll know its dreams and wishes, and will know how to deal with them. “You will never be able to escape from your heart. So it’s better to listen to what it has to say. That way, you’ll never have to fear an unanticipated blow.

Lalla Ruk Dearest dream, my soul's enchantment Lovely guest from heav'n above, Most benevolent attender To the earthly realm below, You gave me blissful satisfaction Momentary but complete: Bringing with you happy tidings - Like a herald from the skies. I dreamed dreams of life eternal In that Promised Land of peace; I dreamed dreams of fragrant regions, Of a tranquil, sweet Kashmir; I could witness celebrations, Festivals of roses vernal Honoring that lovely maiden From lands strange and far away. And, with glistening enchantment Like an angel from above, - This untainted, youthful vision Came before my dreaming eyes; Like a veil, a shining shroud Screened her lovely face from view, Tenderly she did incline Her shy gazes toward the earth. All her traits - her timid shyness Underneath her shining crown, Childlike her animation, And her face's noble beauty - Glowing with a depth of feeling, Sweet serenity and peace - All of these completely artless Indescribably sublime! As I watched, the apparition (Captivating me in passing) Never to return, flew by; I pursued - but it had gone! T'was a vision merely fleeting, Transient illumination Leaving nothing but a legend Of its passing through my life! T'is not ours to harbor Beauty's spirit - Ah, so pure! It comes nigh but for a moment From its heavenly abode; Like a dream, it slips away, Like an airy dream of morning: But in sacred reminiscence It is married with the heart! Only in the purest instants Of our life does it appear Bringing with it revelations Beneficial to our hearts; That our hearts may know of heaven In this earthly shadow realm, It allows us momentary Glimpses through the earthly veil. And through all that here is lovely, All that animates our lives, To our souls it speaks a language Reassuring and distinct; When it quits our earthly region It bestows a gift of love Glowing in our evening heaven: "Tis a farewell star for all to see.

My mother’s true appeal went beyond the clash of the beautiful trust fund darling as the arm candy of an overweight trailer salesman. Carl grew up in harsh, chaotic poverty. His escape was the alcoholism that was conceived during puberty and flourished throughout adulthood. His initial career was a diesel mechanic wearing faded coveralls with oil up his nails and sweat on his brow. His earliest homes were the dingy trailers he would later profit from. His first marriage was doused with benders, acid trips, and sex crazed parties packed with orgies with a first wife who’d lost track of number of dicks shoved down her throat in the midst of intoxication. I don’t know what sparked his revelation, but at some point, Carl decided to fiercely pursue the world he envied. He wanted a life of starched, white shirts, ties, SUVs, and picket fences. He ached for the scent of steaks grilling on his sunny patio. He dreamed of white-collar southern beauty and my mother, in all her naïve innocence, was the loveliest possession he could ever obtain.

Faith is all about trusting God even when you don’t understand His plan. God could have healed David just like He restored my sister Lisa. But God is sovereign. I don’t claim to understand it all, but I do know this: God is good. He has a great plan for your life, a destiny for you to fulfill. No matter how many disadvantages or setbacks you must deal with, if you shake off the self-pity, stop blaming, and keep pressing forward, nothing will be able to keep you from becoming all that God created you to be. Stop making excuses. Quit dwelling on disappointments, on the unfairness and hurt inflicted upon you. Know that God has something great coming your way. The worst handicaps are those you place on yourself. Too many people are waiting for God to make them perfect before they pursue their dreams and destinies. Go after yours right now. Honor God with what you have. He wants to take your liabilities and turn them into assets. First, though, you have to accept that God may not remove your challenge, but He will use it to your advantage.

And to all the young people in particular, I hope you will hear this. I have, as Tim said, spent my entire adult life fighting for what I believe in. I’ve had successes and I’ve had setbacks. Sometimes, really painful ones. Many of you are at the beginning of your professional public and political careers. You will have successes and setbacks, too. This loss hurts, but please never stop believing that fighting for what’s right is worth it. It is. It is worth it. And so we need, we need you to keep up these fights now and for the rest of your lives. And to all the women, and especially the young women, who put their faith in this campaign and in me, I want you to know that nothing has made me prouder than to be your champion. Now, I, I know, I know we have still not shattered that highest and hardest glass ceiling, but someday, someone will, and hopefully sooner than we might think right now. And, and to all the little girls who are watching this, never doubt that you are valuable and powerful and deserving of every chance and opportunity in the world to pursue and achieve your own dreams.

It had to do somewhat with the Shrouded Traveler. Carlo Marx and I once sat down together, knee to knee, in two chairs, facing, and I told him a dream I had about a strange Arabian figure that was pursing me across the desert; that I tried to avoid; that finally overtook me just before I reached the Protective City. ‘Who is this?’ said Carlo. We pondered it. I proposed it was myself, wearing a shroud. That wasn’t it. Something, someone, some spirit was pursuing all of us across the desert of life and was bound to catch us before we reached heaven. Naturally, now that I look back on it, this is only death: death will overtake us before heaven. The one thing that we yearn for in our living days, that makes us sigh and groan and undergo sweet nauseas of all kinds, is the remembrance of some lost bliss that was probably experienced in the womb and can only be reproduced (though we hate to admit it) in death. But who wants to die? In the rush of events I kept thinking about this in the back of my mind. I told it to Dean and he instantly recognized it as the mere simple longing for pure death; and because we’re all of us never in life again, he, rightly, would have nothing to do with it, and I agreed with him then.

Revitalized and healthy, I started dreaming new dreams. I saw ways that I could make a significant contribution by sharing what I’ve learned. I decided to refocus my legal practice on counseling and helping start-up companies avoid liability and protect their intellectual property. To share some of what I know, I started a blog, IP Law for Startups, where I teach basic lessons on trade secrets, trademarks, copyrights, and patents and give tips for avoiding the biggest blunders that destroy the value of intellectual assets. Few start-up companies, especially women-owned companies that rarely get venture capital funding, can afford the expensive hourly rates of a large law firm to the get the critical information they need. I feel deeply rewarded when I help a company create a strategy that protects the value of their company and supports their business dreams. Further, I had a dream to help young women see their career possibilities. In partnership with my sister, Julie Simmons, I created lookilulu.com, a website where women share their insights, career paths, and ways they have integrated motherhood with their professional pursuits. When my sister and I were growing up on a farm, we had a hard time seeing that women could have rewarding careers. With Lookilulu® we want to help young women see what we couldn’t see: that dreams are not linear—they take many twists and unexpected turns. As I’ve learned the hard way, dreams change and shift as life happens. I’ve learned the value of continuing to dream new dreams after other dreams are derailed. I’m sure I’ll have many more dreams in my future. I’ve learned to be open to new and unexpected opportunities. By way of postscript, Jill writes, “I didn’t grow up planning to be lawyer. As a girl growing up in a small rural town, I was afraid to dream. I loved science, but rather than pursuing medical school, I opted for low-paying laboratory jobs, planning to quit when I had children. But then I couldn’t have children. As I awakened to the possibility that dreaming was an inalienable right, even for me, I started law school when I was thirty; intellectual property combines my love of law and science.” As a young girl, Jill’s rightsizing involved mustering the courage to expand her dreams, to dream outside of her box. Once she had children, she again transformed her dreams. In many ways her dreams are bigger and aim to help more people than before the twists and turns in her life’s path.

Here i sit all broken hearted Came to sleep that's when it started. Broken dreams from behind Fall beneath me so unkind. Sorrow swallows sucks and chews, All the dreams I had to lose. Thinking of all the lies i was told Makes me feel hollow and cold. Behind my smile I force on my face Is a broken man not having a place. I wonder aimless through the night Depression is the demon I fight. They all ask me how I'm doing Its hard to stop the pain pursuing. I choke pain down and grin so wide Only to kill the fear inside. Sleep deprived awake and tired this curse is a trap all ready wired. Just sleep more they all say I would if the past would go away. It's better now to be alone Than lied and cheated to the bone. I hate the life I've lived thus far And gladly wear this awful scar. It has gotten easier that is no lie, I no longer wish that I would die. I dream of days when I feel this pain and deal with it without strain. I do not know where I will go only god will ever know. I pray for all the promises forgotten, the empty chords that fell all rotten. I aim to search look and seek This life i want simple and meek. It makes the past so very grey The thoughts of future day The night will fade and dissolve I march on with no resolve Ahead i walk through pain and sorrow Only to seek a better tomorrow

I hope to address and satisfactorily answer a number of issues throughout this scroll, namely, how I should elect to live out the remainder of my life. What qualities should I incorporate into my personhood and what noxious characteristics must I jettison from an evolving personal character? Questions that establish the spine of this scroll include does a person need the bookends of both faith and hope to bracket personal survival? Should I take a vow of poverty, chastity, and public service, and seek to live an honorable life based upon the principles of loyalty and courage? Must a person clasp vivid dreams close to their heart? Must a person stalk their personal calling with all their ferocity and resolve to hang onto the slender stalk of wispy wishes with all their might? Alternatively, should a person resolve to accept a life free from all forms of wanting? Can I discover a way to live in a supple way? Should I invest diminishing personal resources into self-discovery? Should I intensely search out the tenderest spot in my being? Do I dare plunge into the affectionate pulse that fills my innermost cavities with glowing warmth towards humanity? Given that death is inevitable, should I disdain failure, because how can anyone fail at living while pursuing the beam cast by the interior flash of their incandescent light? While many of these questions might prove elusive or unanswerable, the act of questioning has independent value.

I think it’s important to reiterate here that I didn’t start out wanting to be a gardener, or a designer for that matter. It was all trial and error and figuring things out. And sometimes you’ve got to try something outside of your comfort zone to figure out what it is that you truly love. Well, you could say that about you and me right from the start. You were never looking for the loud guy, and I certainly wasn’t looking for the quiet girl. Now I look back and go, “If I would’ve ended up with that quiet guy or that stable guy or that safe guy, I would never have been able to pursue any of these dreams, because no one would have pushed me to these new places I discovered in myself.” Those other types of guys might have allowed me to stay in that safe place. They wouldn’t have drawn you out. That’s interesting. And if I had wound up with some cheerleader who was always the life of the party, I don’t think I would have found my way, either. I needed you for that. Nowadays when I think about the name Magnolia, I think about it in terms that refer to much more than the blossoming of our business. I think about the buds on the three, and how they really are just the tightest buds--they look like rocks, almost. And I feel like when Chip and I met, that tight little bud was me. I was risk averse, and in some ways, I don’t think I saw the beauty or the potential in myself. Then I wound up with Chip Gaines and-- You bloomed? I did. If I hadn’t married Chip, I might not have ever bloomed. I can’t imagine what my life would be if we hadn’t traveled this road. We celebrated our twelfth anniversary recently, and my dad said something that I thought was really beautiful. He said, “Chip, I always thought, when I was out on the baseball field hitting you those grounders, that I was training you to be the next greatest baseball player. But now, looking back and seeing the person you’ve become, I was really training you to be the next greatest dad.

Grieve not for lost love, whether it is through death or the fickle fluctuations of human nature. Love itself is never lost, but just plays hide-and-seek with you in many hearts; that in pursuing it you might find its ever greater manifestations. It will keep hiding from you, and disappointing you, until you have quested long enough to find its abode in the One who resides in the deepest recesses of your own soul, and in the heart of everything. Then you will say: “O Lord, when I resided in the house of mortal consciousness, I thought I loved my parents and my friends; I fancied I loved birds, beasts, possessions. But now that I have moved into the mansion of Omnipresence, I know it is Thee alone I love, manifested as parents, friends, all creatures and all things. By loving Thee alone, my heart expanded to love the many. By being loyal in my love to Thee, I am loyal to all I love. And I love all beings forever.” I see life on earth as only a scenic backdrop behind which my loved ones hide at death. As I love them when they are before my eyes, so does my love follow them with my ever-watching mental gaze when they move elsewhere, behind death’s screen. Those whom I have loved I could never hate, even though they grow uninteresting through ugly behavior. In my museum of recollections, I can still behold those traits that caused me to love them. Beneath the temporary mental masks of those whose behavior I dislike, I see the perfect love of my great Beloved, even as I see it in those worthy souls that I love. To stop loving is to stem the purifying flow of love. I shall loyally love every being, every thing, until I find all races, all creatures, all animate and inanimate objects embraced by my love. I will love until every soul, every star, every forsaken creature, every atom, is lodged in my heart; for in the infinite love of God, my breast of eternity is large enough to hold everything in me. O Love, I see Thy glowing face in the gems. I behold Thy shy blush in the blossoms. I am enraptured, hearing Thee warble in the birds. And I dream in ecstasy when my heart embraces Thee in all hearts. O Love, I met Thee in all things—only a little and for a while—but in Omnipresence I clasp Thee entirely and forever, and I rejoice in Thy joy evermore.

Belle is planning to host a series of salons," said Lio, appearing out of nowhere to fill her silence. It had been his first promise to her, in those wild days right after they broke the curse, when they talked feverishly about their most cherished dreams and whispered their deepest fears to each other. Back then, Belle's only fear had been her own ignorance. She had told him of her wish to travel to Paris and attend a salon herself, perhaps one that counted some of her favorite philosophes and encyclopédistes among its members. He had said her dream was toon small and that she herself should host one. The Mademoiselle de Vignerot smiled politely. "What will the subject be?" "Oh, everything," said Belle. Her enthusiasm elicited laughter, but she was entirely serious. The comte de Chamfort cleared his throat, his lips curling into a sneer. "That is very broad, madame. Surely you have a more specific interest? My parents used to attend the famous Bout-du-Banc literary salon in Paris, but that was a very long time ago." Belle gave him her best patient smile. "I don't wish to be limited, monsieur. My salons will invite scientists, philosophers, inventors, novelists, really anyone in possession of a good idea." The comte guffawed. "Why on earth would you do such a thing?" "To learn from them, monsieur. I would have thought the reason obvious." Marguerite snorted into her glass. Belle sipped her drink as Lio placed his hand on the small of her back. She didn't know if it was meant to calm her down or encourage her. "Whatever for?" the comte asked with the menacing air of a man discovering he was the butt of a joke. "Everything that is worth learning is already taught." "To whom?" Belle felt the heat rising in her cheeks. "Strictly the wealthy sons of wealthier fathers?" Some of Bastien's guests gasped, they themselves being the children of France's aristocracy, but Belle was heartened when she saw Marguerite smile encouragingly. "I believe that education is a right, monsieur, and one that has long been reserved exclusively for the most privileged among us. My salons will reflect the true reality." "Which is what, madame?" Marguerite prompted eagerly. Belle's heart rattled in her chest. "That scholarship is the province of any who would pursue it.

Of course, we suffer from bottomless avidity. Our lives are so precious to us, we are so watchful of waste. Or perhaps a better name for it would be the Sense of Personal Destiny. Yes, I think that is better than avidity. Shall my life by one-thousandth of an inch fall short of its ultimate possibility? It is a different thing to value oneself, and to prize oneself crazily. And then there are our plans, idealizations. These are dangerous, too. They can consume us like parasites, eat us, drink us, and leave us lifelessly prostrate. And yet we are always inviting the parasite, as if we were eager to be drained and eaten. It is because we have been taught there is no limit to what a man can be. Six hundred years ago, a man was what he was born to be Satan and the Church, representing God, did battle over him. He, by reason of his choice, partially decided the outcome. But whether, after life, he went to hell or to heaven, his place among other men was given. It could not be contested. But, since, the stage has been reset and human beings only walk on it, and, under this revision, we have, instead, history to answer to. We were important enough then for our souls to be fought over. Now, each of us is responsible for his own salvation, which is in his greatness. And that, that greatness, is the rock our hearts are abraded on. Great minds, great beauties, great lovers and criminals surround us. From the great sadness and desperation of Werthers and Don Juans we went to the great ruling images of Napoleons; from these to murderers who had that right over victims because they were greater than the victims; to men who felt privileged to approach others with a whip; to schoolboys and clerks who roared like revolutionary lions; to those pimps and subway creatures, debaters in midnight cafeterias who believed they could be great in treachery and catch the throats of those they felt were sound and well in the lassos of their morbidity; to dreams of greatly beautiful shadows embracing on a flawless screen. Because of these things we hate immoderately and punish ourselves and one another immoderately. The fear of lagging pursues and maddens us. The fear lies in us like a cloud. It makes an inner climate of darkness. And occasionally there is a storm and hate and wounding rain out of us.

In a Harvard Business Review article titled “Do Women Lack Ambition?” Anna Fels, a psychiatrist at Cornell University, observes that when the dozens of successful women she interviewed told their own stories, “they refused to claim a central, purposeful place.” Were Dr. Fels to interview you, how would you tell your story? Are you using language that suggests you’re the supporting actress in your own life? For instance, when someone offers words of appreciation about a dinner you’ve prepared, a class you’ve taught, or an event you organized and brilliantly executed, do you gracefully reply “Thank you” or do you say, “It was nothing”? As Fels tried to understand why women refuse to be the heroes of their own stories, she encountered the Bem Sex-Role Inventory, which confirms that society considers a woman to be feminine only within the context of a relationship and when she is giving something to someone. It’s no wonder that a “feminine” woman finds it difficult to get in the game and demand support to pursue her goals. It also explains why she feels selfish when she doesn’t subordinate her needs to others. A successful female CEO recently needed my help. It was mostly business-related but also partly for her. As she started to ask for my assistance, I sensed how difficult it was for her. Advocate on her organization’s behalf? Piece of cake. That’s one of the reasons her business has been successful. But advocate on her own behalf? I’ll confess that even among my closest friends I find it painful to say, “Look what I did,” and so I don’t do it very often. If you want to see just how masterful most women have become at deflecting, the next time you’re with a group of girlfriends, ask them about something they (not their husband or children) have done well in the past year. Chances are good that each woman will quickly and deftly redirect the conversation far, far away from herself. “A key type of discrimination that women face is the expectation that feminine women will forfeit opportunities for recognition,” says Fels. “When women do speak as much as men in a work situation or compete for high-visibility positions, their femininity is assailed.” My point here isn’t to say that relatedness and nurturing and picking up our pom-poms to cheer others on is unimportant. Those qualities are often innate to women. If we set these “feminine” qualities aside or neglect them, we will have lost an irreplaceable piece of ourselves. But to truly grow up, we must learn to throw down our pom-poms, believing we can act and that what we have to offer is a valuable part of who we are. When we recognize this, we give ourselves permission to dream and to encourage the girls and women

Kill Yourself Buddhism argues that your idea of who “you” are is an arbitrary mental construction and that you should let go of the idea that “you” exist at all; that the arbitrary metrics by which you define yourself actually trap you, and thus you’re better off letting go of everything. In a sense, you could say that Buddhism encourages you to not give a fuck. It sounds wonky, but there are some psychological benefits to this approach to life. When we let go of the stories we tell about ourselves, to ourselves, we free ourselves up to actually act (and fail) and grow. When someone admits to herself, “You know, maybe I’m not good at relationships,” then she is suddenly free to act and end her bad marriage. She has no identity to protect by staying in a miserable, crappy marriage just to prove something to herself. When the student admits to himself, “You know, maybe I’m not a rebel; maybe I’m just scared,” then he’s free to be ambitious again. He has no reason to feel threatened by pursuing his academic dreams and maybe failing. When the insurance adjuster admits to himself, “You know, maybe there’s nothing unique or special about my dreams or my job,” then he’s free to give that screenplay an honest go and see what happens. I have both some good news and some bad news for you: there is little that is unique or special about your problems. That’s why letting go is so liberating. There’s a kind of self-absorption that comes with fear based on an irrational certainty. When you assume that your plane is the one that’s going to crash, or that your project idea is the stupid one everyone is going to laugh at, or that you’re the one everyone is going to choose to mock or ignore, you’re implicitly telling yourself, “I’m the exception; I’m unlike everybody else; I’m different and special.” This is narcissism, pure and simple. You feel as though your problems deserve to be treated differently, that your problems have some unique math to them that doesn’t obey the laws of the physical universe. My recommendation: don’t be special; don’t be unique. Redefine your metrics in mundane and broad ways. Choose to measure yourself not as a rising star or an undiscovered genius. Choose to measure yourself not as some horrible victim or dismal failure. Instead, measure yourself by more mundane identities: a student, a partner, a friend, a creator. The narrower and rarer the identity you choose for yourself, the more everything will seem to threaten you. For that reason, define yourself in the simplest and most ordinary ways possible. This often means giving up some grandiose ideas about yourself: that you’re uniquely intelligent, or spectacularly talented, or intimidatingly attractive, or especially victimized in ways other people could never imagine.

I finally came to the decision to break the shackles that held me hostage. The process was not overnight nor was it easy. Today, I am proud to say that what once held me didn’t keep me. What was meant to break me didn’t destroy me. I forgave people, I went to therapy and I sorted through my issues. I now know that even though I am not my mistakes. I am not my failures and that I was not created not to pursue my dreams. I was not brought forth on this earth to carry around my past. So now I move forward towards greatness and my happiness.

During our Thanksgiving meal, my father gives thanks for living in a free country where he can vote. I always share gratitude for being able to pursue my hopes and dreams, despite being female. My relatives and I are proud for our lives in America, a nation where freedom reigns.

During our Thanksgiving meal, my father gives thanks for living in a free country where he can vote. I always share gratitude for being able to pursue my hopes and dreams, despite being female. My relatives and I are proud for our lives in America, a nation where freedom reigns

To all the little girls watching this, never doubt that you are valuable and powerful and deserving of every chance and opportunity in the world to pursue and achieve your own dreams.

You in my eyes! You wake up in my eyes like the morning Sun, You surround my life like the day and its busy schedules, You are there when I am sitting idle or pursuing errands undone, Because thinking of you is the default part of all my schedules, Then when the day tires me, You sleep in my eyes, There in my dreams with me to be, While I wish I never opened my eyes, And in the darkness of the night that spreads everywhere, I hold my eyelids tight, To not let your dreams escape from the crevices in my eyes somewhere, And throughout the night I hold you in this dreamy delight tight, Then as the morning bird taps its beak on the glass window, I let the night cease for me as I let your beauty leave the territory of my eyes, And percolate into the morning light that flashes over the willow, Then begins the magic of recreating you in the light of the day with my open eyes, And then my darling Irma, you spread like the sunshine in every corner of my world, And wherever I go I carry my universe with me, In my eyes, your dreams your views and my entire world, And that is how I like it to be, at least for now this is me, But there are moments when dreams in closed or open eyes, Are awakened by your memories, And how I wish I could vanish into the skies, Because on Earth I miss you and our realities, How you feel I do not know, maybe you feel the same, But then a Summer without flowers is not a true Summer, And in a flowerless Summer nothing feels the same, You too could have evolved the feeling to tell me, “my darling let me be your flowery Summer!” Nevertheless, for now let me close my eyes and dream again of you, The Summer, the flowers and us together, To feel once more how I once felt with you, And maybe this time when I vanish into the skies we shall be together!

Busy street of emotions On a languid Sunday afternoon on the busy street, Everything everywhere appeared to be missing a beat, Few of their desires, of their hopes, many of their own dreams, And in midst of all this I could hear strange screams, There was rush, there was movement, there was life in its busiest state, Many loved to be a part of it whereas a few showed all signs of hate, They were the ones who were not chasing life, they were after something different, That the busy street did not offer, and to the most people caught in its glamour it nothing meant, To me all appeared to be seeking the same illusive something, A thing that is born of nothing, and to a few it means everything, That something, about which I had no clue, but the busy street certainly knew about it, It knew everything about it, But it had concealed it from all, happy and sad alike, For now it had kept everyone busy pursuing what he/she liked, and what next he/she would like, It was then she appeared in the busiest corner of the street, Where people crossed each other; but noone nobody did ever meet, They all saw other people's eyes but not what their eyes could see, All were in this maze of fascinations where they had been before, but there they again and again wished to be, And then she got up and left this busy corner, And whispered in my ear, “let me show you a life that is real and livelier!” I followed her wherever she went, And that is how my Sunday was spent, Finally as the evening set in and people began to feel weary, And life too seemed dreary, I looked at the once busy street that was now empty and desolate, “This is the fact of life, and this is what you shall be able to isolate!” With these last words she disappeared, And now on the street, only I and my infinite avatars appeared, Everywhere, in everything, and the street got busy again, Because now I was dealing with life in its reality: joy, sorrow, love, faith, defection, everything and even pain, So whenever you visit this busy street, walk towards everything with every feeling, Because in our lives we all are either with retreating joy or with an advancing pain dealing!

Sometimes I fall asleep and dream about a world like that. I dream about a world where I’m madly in love with Jesus and with another guy. At first the other guy and I are pursuing celibacy together, but then we change our minds and get married and have adventures and grow old together. But even in the middle of the dream, I don’t quite believe it.” “Why not? Couldn’t you do all those things if you wanted to?” “When I look into the eyes of my imaginary husband, I realize it’s not really him I’m in love with. I’m in love with the guy from the beginning of the dream, the guy who’s so passionately in love with the Jesus of the Bible that he would rather deny himself for his entire life than risk breaking his Savior’s heart. I’m in love with the guy willing to face the costs of celibacy. If he becomes someone else, I become less eager to marry him.

Finally, note that his grandmother is not even present in the current situation, as he has now taken up the reins of domestication and subjugated his own will without anyone's else's influence. In the Toltec tradition we refer to this phenomenon as self-domestication. As my father likes to say, “Humans are the only animals on the planet that self-domesticate.” The relationship between the boy and his grandmother forms a part of the Dream of the Planet, and the lunch between the grandmother and her grandson is a basic example of how domestication and self-domestication within the Dream occurs. The grandmother domesticated her grandson in that moment, but he continued to self-domesticate himself long after that. Self-domestication is the act of accepting ourselves on the condition that we live up to the ideals we have adopted from others in the Dream of the Planet, without ever considering if those ideals are what we truly want. While the consequences of finishing a bowl of soup are minimal, domestication and self-domestication can take much more serious and darker forms as well. For instance, many of us learned to be critical of our physical appearance because it wasn't “good enough” by society's standards. We were presented with the belief that we weren't tall enough, thin enough, or that our skin wasn't the right color, and the moment we agreed with that belief we began to self-domesticate. Because we adopted an external belief, we either rejected or tried to change our physical appearance so we could feel worthy of our own self-acceptance and the acceptance of others. Imagine for a moment the many industries that would cease to exist if we all loved our bodies exactly the way they are. To be clear, domestication regarding body image is different from wanting to lose weight in order to be healthy, or even having a preference to look a certain way. The key difference is that with a preference, you come from a place of self-love and self-acceptance, whereas with domestication you start from a place of shame, guilt, and not being “enough.” The line between these two can be thin sometimes, and a Master of Self is one who can look within and determine his or her true motive. Another popular form of domestication in the current Dream of the Planet revolves around social class and material possessions. There is an underlying belief promulgated by society that those who have the most “stuff” or who hold certain jobs are somehow more important than the rest. I, for one, have never met anyone who was more important than anyone else, as we are all beautiful and unique creations of the Divine. And yet many people pursue career paths they dislike and buy things they don't really want or need all in an effort to achieve the elusive goals of peer acceptance and self-acceptance. Instances such as these (and we can think of many others) are the ways in which domestication leads to self-domestication, and the result is that we have people living lives that aren't their own.

Stability allows a person the freedom of choice, my friend. People can pursue their dreams only when they are living in a society where survival is not a daily threat. In a society without security and stability, there are no intellectuals or businessmen or artists or geniuses.

realized I wasn’t just reframing my perspective about things. I was also learning about myself and how my mindset gets in the way as I pursue my dreams and goals. What a revelation to have while clearing clutter!

As my father likes to say, “Humans are the only animals on the planet that self-domesticate.” The relationship between the boy and his grandmother forms a part of the Dream of the Planet, and the lunch between the grandmother and her grandson is a basic example of how domestication and self-domestication within the Dream occurs. The grandmother domesticated her grandson in that moment, but he continued to self-domesticate himself long after that. Self-domestication is the act of accepting ourselves on the condition that we live up to the ideals we have adopted from others in the Dream of the Planet, without ever considering if those ideals are what we truly want. While the consequences of finishing a bowl of soup are minimal, domestication and self-domestication can take much more serious and darker forms as well. For instance, many of us learned to be critical of our physical appearance because it wasn't “good enough” by society's standards. We were presented with the belief that we weren't tall enough, thin enough, or that our skin wasn't the right color, and the moment we agreed with that belief we began to self-domesticate. Because we adopted an external belief, we either rejected or tried to change our physical appearance so we could feel worthy of our own self-acceptance and the acceptance of others. Imagine for a moment the many industries that would cease to exist if we all loved our bodies exactly the way they are. To be clear, domestication regarding body image is different from wanting to lose weight in order to be healthy, or even having a preference to look a certain way. The key difference is that with a preference, you come from a place of self-love and self-acceptance, whereas with domestication you start from a place of shame, guilt, and not being “enough.” The line between these two can be thin sometimes, and a Master of Self is one who can look within and determine his or her true motive. Another popular form of domestication in the current Dream of the Planet revolves around social class and material possessions. There is an underlying belief promulgated by society that those who have the most “stuff” or who hold certain jobs are somehow more important than the rest. I, for one, have never met anyone who was more important than anyone else, as we are all beautiful and unique creations of the Divine. And yet many people pursue career paths they dislike and buy things they don't really want or need all in an effort to achieve the elusive goals of peer acceptance and self-acceptance. Instances such as these (and we can think of many others) are the ways in which domestication leads to self-domestication, and the result is that we have people living lives that aren't their own.

For the third time today, I feel a lump in my throat. I know Appa is happy for me and my life as a K-pop trainee, but I can’t help feeling guilty for the dreams he gave up in order to let me pursue mine.

toxic relationships to pursue their dreams. Existential philosopher Martin Heidegger said, “If I take death into my life, acknowledge it, and face it squarely, I will free myself from the anxiety of death and the pettiness of life—and only then will I be free to become myself.

On the morning of the funeral, we arrived at the church an hour or so early to set up and prepare. We like to be the first ones at a church funeral, but today we were beat by Chad’s mother, who was setting photos of her son around the small sanctuary of the church with a smile on her face. She had photos of Chad as an infant, dressed in his baby clothes; the classic T-ball photo shoots that are equal parts Americana and boyhood dreams; the prom photo shoot; the graduate photos. And that was it. The pictures stopped after high school when he decided to pursue a life away from his parents.

want to inspire women to pursue their creative dreams

(...) The people I chatted with in Kito's didn't seem to doubt that I'd been to the top of the Thumb; they just didn't mcuh care. (...) Less than a month after sitting on the summit of the Thumb, I was back in Boulder, nailing up siding on the Spruce Street Townhouses, the same condosI'd been framing when I left for Alaska. (...) It is easy, when you are young, to believe that what you desire is no less than what you deserve, to assume that if you want something badly enough, it is your God-given right to have it. When I decided to go to Alaska that April, like Chris McCandless, I was a raw youth who mistook passion for insight and acted according to an obscure, gap-ridden logic. I thought climbing the Devils Thumb would fix all that was wrong with my life. In the end, of course, it changed almost nothing. But I came to appreciate that mountains make poor receptacles for dreams. And I lived to tell my tale.

Halo touches his fingertips to my cheek. “You pursued the right dream with the wrong man. Give yourself time to sort yourself out. Figure out what you want to do. Who you want to be. The life you want to build. When you know all that about yourself, you’ll be able to identify the guy who makes all that better for you. He’ll add to it. Not take away from it or diminish it.

If you truly want to be intimate with the people you love, you need to know what drives them. In different stages of our lives we are driven by different things; that is why it is so important to make this an annual exercise with regular review throughout the year. If you asked your spouse what his or her dreams were when you first starting dating and you haven’t spent much time on the subject since, you will likely discover that he or she has a whole new set of dreams now. If this is the case, may I suggest you ask this question of your significant other as a starting point for the renewal in your relationship: Which of your dreams got lost along the way while I was too busy pursuing my own

To truly “reach for our dreams” and achieve a specific goal, certain steps need to be followed, information researched, decisions made, and action taken. If I wanted to pursue my dream, I had to stop dreaming and get down to business.

People are afraid to pursue their most important dreams, because they feel that they don’t deserve them, or that they’ll be unable to achieve them. We, their hearts, become fearful just thinking of loved ones who go away forever, or of moments that could have been good but weren’t, or of treasures that might have been found but we’re forever hidden in the sands. Because, when these things happen, we suffer terribly. My heart is afraid that it will have to suffer.

The Impact of Others' Opinions Sooner or later we all confront other people's opinions. When this happens, remember what my 58 years taught me: Not everyone will appreciate you and everything you can offer. Many people think: If you don't live life as I do, something is the matter with you. We know they couldn't be more wrong. While we’re waiting for them to figure that out, don't let these people bother you. Move on and … … seek out those who are wise enough to truly appreciate you and all you have to offer. Remembering that just because, Some people don't believe in you, is no reason not to pursue your wildest dreams. After all, Their beliefs are just opinions, not facts.

I’ve believed in following dreams my entire life. And even though these last eight months have left me questioning everything... I can’t just turn that off. I can’t not believe that passion is worth pursuing. If anything, I think I’m even more desperate to believe that it is. Because to me, that’s the only way the world makes sense; when we live for what we love.

Tormented I will not reason, wrestle here with you, Though you pursue and worry me about; As well put forth my swarthy arm to stop The wild wind howling, darkly mad without. The night is yours for revels; day will light. I will not fight you, bold and tigerish, For I am weak, while you are gaining strength; Peace! cease tormenting me to have your wish. But when you're filled and sated with the flesh, I shall go swiftly to the silver stream, To cleanse my body for the spirit's sake, And sun my limbs, and close my eyes to dream.

Margo. Look at me.” I raised my head to see him concerned, soft, perfect. “I have been in love with you for seven years,” he said with a small smile. “I know I told you I stopped, but it was a lie. Or maybe I didn’t realize it myself until recently. I’ve wanted to make you mine every day for seven years and every day I have failed. But this month I realized that what I felt for you in the past pales in comparison to how I feel for you now. And now, I would do anything to protect you. I’ve loved you every day since I moved into the office with you.” His voice rumbled through me. “I’ve never wanted anything more in my entire life. Not even making partner. I would give it all up if it meant you could pursue your dreams.” “I don’t deserve you.” “Don’t ever say that,” he said fiercely. “I will spend every day proving to you just how much you deserve this.” “I love you too, Andrew.

And that was the last time I went back to my home church, the straw that broke the camel’s back. I was out in the world, pursuing my dream, speaking my truth, using my talents, summoning the courage to share my fears and insecurities in front of strangers to entertain them and leave them happier and feeling less alone, and this guy thought I had fallen from grace because I occasionally said dirty words? Well, fuck that. I never went back.

I’m very happy to see you this morning. It is another chance for me to live and keep focusing on my journey. As long as I’m still alive every brand new day, I will always pursue my destiny to come to reality.

As soon as you start to pursue a dream, your life wakes up and everything has meaning.

Carl pointed his finger at me and then at Austin, who was still sitting next to him. “You see, my ambitious friends, when you do things your own way, you might achieve some success and gain some riches. But when you humble yourselves and strive to live with purpose while relying on a greater power for guidance, you will receive everything you set out to achieve and then some. Every day people get the same opportunity King Solomon did. Only most are so obsessed with themselves and don’t ask for wisdom. Instead, they ask for riches. That’s why they get neither.

Me? ...I'm a woman of great faith who takes the time to encourage others, while pursuing my own vision.

While it was a remarkable moment to see my son pursuing his dream, it was also a rude awakening. I was doing my children a disservice by setting the example that it’s okay to put yourself last… to put your own desires on the back burner while you take care of everyone else.

The great paradox of the age we live in, then, is that it’s one in which it’s exceedingly difficult to secure a record deal, and yet pursuing the path of an independent musician has never carried with it more potential upside. Another way to look at it: For the first time in the history of recorded music, you now have the astounding ability to become your own record label.

I kept up with my work for the legal firm, continuing the transcription of the audio notes of one of the firm’s partners, presently engaged by a multinational oil and gas corporation to pursue every possible course of action against a certain individual, who happened also to be a member of the legal profession, and who had sought to prove, indeed had proven in law in certain countries though not his own, gross malfeasance on the part of the multinational’s leaders that had resulted in the poisoning of a number of water courses, the destruction of ancient woodland, the decimation of at least two protected species of birds, the kidnapping of activists and the corruption of public officials, as well as tax fraud, racketeering, stock-market manipulation and other crimes besides. The firm for which I worked, in representing this multinational oil and gas corporation, had already succeeded in having the attorney in question disbarred in several states, provinces, unincorporated territories and crown dependencies; in some but not in all places he could no longer practice law, the only profession he had ever dreamed of pursuing, he explained in a podcast interview from his home, where he was at present under house arrest.

Freedom doesn’t necessarily come from working for yourself, or from setting your own hours, or even from never having to worry about money. Freedom is a state of mind. It’s the recognition that pursuing what modern celebrity culture has a way of telling us we should want in life—fame, fortune, accolades—will never lead to contentment. Freedom is about surrendering control and letting the chips fall where they may—and knowing that you’ll be okay.

I have no doubt that my parents would have relished having more time as my primary family, the people I thought of as *home.* They could have chosen to disapprove of or resent me when I made choices that they did not anticipate, choices that kept me far away form them. But their love for me was never about ownership, or control, or whether I followed the path they expected. They were grateful that Dan and I had found each other, and they weren't afraid that we would struggle, because they themselves had not experienced a life free from struggle. *We're lucky,* my father said in his wedding toast, *to get to witness your love and commitment. We can't wait to see the life you'll build together.* They never saw me as choosing one kind of family over another, one dream or one life over another. They could not imagine a future in which I did not pursue everything I wanted.

In my career, I have always believed that education goes beyond textbooks and classrooms. It's about kindling minds and hearts with a thirst for knowledge and a passion to make a difference in the world. It's about empowering individuals to become the best versions of themselves, to achieve their full potential, and to have the courage and tenacity to pursue their dreams.

Like most of us, Shane Niemeyer likes to test his limits. THE HURT ARTIST gave me an entirely different perspective on just how far he fell before becoming an Ironman. His life story deserves to be told and demonstrates what perseverance can do for anyone no matter how hopeless they may feel their situation is. You may never compete in an Ironman Triathlon, but Shane shows how anyone can overcome any obstacle and pursue their dream with passion.

Mumbai is a city of stark contrasts - providing opportunities to millionaires to pursue their riches and millions of poor to pursue livelihood. For many, Mumbai is a city where their dreams begin; for many others, it marks and end of a dream.

Richard Kay Richard Kay became friends with Diana, Princess of Wales, through his job as royal correspondent for London’s Daily Mail. After her separation in 1992, he used his knowledge to give a penetrating and unique insight into Diana’s troubled life, and they remained friends until the end. Richard is now diary editor or the Daily Mail and lives in London with his wife and three children. Over the years, I saw her at her happiest and in her darkest moments. There were moments of confusion and despair when I believed Diana was being driven by the incredible pressures made on her almost to the point of destruction. She talked of being strengthened by events, and anyone could see how the bride of twenty had grown into a mature woman, but I never found her strong. She was as unsure of herself at her death as when I first talked to her on that airplane, and she wanted reassurance about the role she was creating for herself. In private, she was a completely different person form the manicured clotheshorse that the public’s insatiable demand for icons had created. She was natural and witty and did a wonderful impression of the Queen. This was the person, she told me, that she would have been all the time if she hadn’t married into the world’s most famous family. What she hated most of all was being called “manipulative” and privately railed against those who used the word to describe her. “They don’t even know me,” she would say bitterly, sitting cross-legged on the floor of her apartment in Kensington Palace and pouring tea from a china pot. It was this blindness, as she saw it, to what she really was that led her seriously to consider living in another country where she hoped she would be understood. The idea first emerged in her mind about three years before her death. “I’ve got to find a place where I can have peace of mind,” she said to me. She considered France, because I was near enough to stay in close touch with William and Harry. She thought of America because she--naively, it must be said--saw it as a country so brimming over with glittery people and celebrities that she would be able to “disappear.” She also thought of South Africa, where her brother, Charles, made a home, and even Australia, because it was the farthest place she could think of from the seat of her unhappiness. But that would have separated her form her sons. Everyone said she would go anywhere, do anything, to have her picture taken, but in my view the truth was completely different. A good day for her was one where her picture was not taken and the paparazzi photographers did not pursue her and clamber over her car. “Why are they so obsessed with me?” she would ask me. I would try to explain, but I never felt she fully understood. Millions of women dreamed of changing places with her, but the Princess that I knew yearned for the ordinary humdrum routine of their lives. “They don’t know how lucky they are,” she would say. On Saturday, just before she was joined by Dodi Al Fayed for their last fateful dinner at the Ritz in Pairs, she told me how fed up she was being compared with Camilla. “It’s all so meaningless,” she said. She didn’t say--she never said--whether she thought Charles and Camilla should marry. Then, knowing that as a journalist I often work at weekends, she said to me, “Unplug your phone and get a good night’s sleep.

I left the practice of law when it became clear that my autistic son needed an advocate. The collective chaos of managing three children, a fourth pregnancy, two nannies, a housekeeper, and a demanding career finally overwhelmed me. My husband and I considered hiring someone to manage our autistic son’s education and therapies, but I simply couldn’t delegate his care. I needed firsthand knowledge of his diagnosis and how to treat it. Leaving professional life was hard. I walked away from friends, a schedule, a salary, and social stature. I plunged into full-time parenting, something at which I was not proficient—something that still perplexes me! However, remaining in the workforce would have been harder. I made a free choice, fully apprised of the risk I took, and I have never looked back. Philosopher Ayn Rand believed there is no such thing as sacrifice. Rather, there are only rational decisions that bring us closer to our ultimate goals. In other words, the choices we make are irrefutable evidence of what we value. Even generous acts reflect a set of values. Living in accordance with those values gratifies us, hence our gain outweighs our loss. In a world of scarcity and competing demands, Rand’s view has a certain hard-nosed rationality. We give up something we want for something we want more. We each have a single life, made up of finite seconds that tick inexorably away. How we choose to spend each day both expresses our values and carries us closer to our ultimate goals, even if we have never articulated precisely what those values and goals are. I was fortunate that my decision to come home had a positive, even miraculous, outcome for my son. Others make similar decisions without such obvious payback. I still have professional aspirations, and I’m pursuing them wholeheartedly, but I will not return to the practice of law. My time at home focused my values and helped me understand what I want to do with my remaining days, months, and years.

The Zookeeper’s Wife is the story of Jan and Antonina Zabinski, Polish Christian zookeepers who, horrified by Nazi racism, managed to save more than three hundred people. Author Diane Ackerman writes movingly about Polish émigré Eva Hoffman’s psychic earthquake of having to shed her name in order to save her life: “Nothing much has happened, except a small, seismic mental shift. The twist in our names takes them a tiny distance from us—but it is a gap into which the infinite hobgoblin of abstraction enters.” Suddenly Eva Hoffman’s given name, and that of her sister, no longer exists even though “they were as surely us as our eyes or hands.” The new names were actually “identification tags, disembodied signs pointing to objects that happen to be my sister and myself. We walk to our seats, into a roomful of unknown faces, with names that make us strangers to ourselves.” DISCOVERING WHO YOU ARE Our names, our identities, our figuring out “This is who I am” are a huge part of discovering our dreams. And haven’t many of us said, “I’ll start dreaming once I wrap up with X, Y, or Z project.” At the same time, we are asking ourselves, “Why do I keep putting things off? There’s so much to do but I can’t get anything done.” Perhaps we have it backwards. Perhaps having goals for ourselves is not something to do after we’ve wrapped up X, Y, and Z projects. Perhaps daring to dream is a goal we need to pursue now, because it’s key to getting those X, Y, and Z projects done. Psychologist Timothy Pychyl writes in an article titled “Teenagers, Identity Crises, and Procrastination” that if we can’t answer the questions “Who am I?” and “What am I?” we’re more likely to procrastinate. In other words, the more people know who they are, the less likely they are to procrastinate. Pychyl explains the interconnectedness between identity and agency as follows: “Identity is that knowledge of who we are. . . . Agency is the belief that we are in control of our decisions and responsible for our outcomes. . . . It means we make a difference, we make things happen, we act on the world. Thus, being an active agent depends on identity, or knowing who we are.” Perhaps, then, the best thing we can do is to put our busyness to the side, and instead focus on our identity and our dreams—or, as management consultant Robin Dickinson said after he read Pychyl’s study, “Focus on your To-Be List, before the To-Do List.” When we return to that to-do list we might just find we’re actually beginning to get things done.

In a Harvard Business Review article titled “Do Women Lack Ambition?” Anna Fels, a psychiatrist at Cornell University, observes that when the dozens of successful women she interviewed told their own stories, “they refused to claim a central, purposeful place.” Were Dr. Fels to interview you, how would you tell your story? Are you using language that suggests you’re the supporting actress in your own life? For instance, when someone offers words of appreciation about a dinner you’ve prepared, a class you’ve taught, or an event you organized and brilliantly executed, do you gracefully reply “Thank you” or do you say, “It was nothing”? As Fels tried to understand why women refuse to be the heroes of their own stories, she encountered the Bem Sex-Role Inventory, which confirms that society considers a woman to be feminine only within the context of a relationship and when she is giving something to someone. It’s no wonder that a “feminine” woman finds it difficult to get in the game and demand support to pursue her goals. It also explains why she feels selfish when she doesn’t subordinate her needs to others. A successful female CEO recently needed my help. It was mostly business-related but also partly for her. As she started to ask for my assistance, I sensed how difficult it was for her. Advocate on her organization’s behalf? Piece of cake. That’s one of the reasons her business has been successful. But advocate on her own behalf? I’ll confess that even among my closest friends I find it painful to say, “Look what I did,” and so I don’t do it very often. If you want to see just how masterful most women have become at deflecting, the next time you’re with a group of girlfriends, ask them about something they (not their husband or children) have done well in the past year. Chances are good that each woman will quickly and deftly redirect the conversation far, far away from herself. “A key type of discrimination that women face is the expectation that feminine women will forfeit opportunities for recognition,” says Fels. “When women do speak as much as men in a work situation or compete for high-visibility positions, their femininity is assailed.” My point here isn’t to say that relatedness and nurturing and picking up our pom-poms to cheer others on is unimportant. Those qualities are often innate to women. If we set these “feminine” qualities aside or neglect them, we will have lost an irreplaceable piece of ourselves. But to truly grow up, we must learn to throw down our pom-poms, believing we can act and that what we have to offer is a valuable part of who we are. When we recognize this, we give ourselves permission to dream and to encourage the girls and women around us to do the same.

You might have tried to stop her,” she exclaimed. As she glanced up at Christopher, a scowl flitted across her face. “Oh. It’s you.” “Miss Hathaway--” he began. “Hold this.” Something warm and wriggling was thrust into his grasp, and Beatrix dashed off to pursue the goat. Dumbfounded, Christopher glanced at the creature in his hands. A baby goat, cream colored, with a brown head. He fumbled to keep from dropping the creature as he glanced at Beatrix’s retreating form and realized she was wearing breeches and boots. Christopher had seen women in every imaginable state of dress or undress. But he had never seen one wearing the clothes of a stablehand. “I must be having a dream,” he told the squirming kid absently. “A very odd dream about Beatrix Hathaway and goats…” “I have her!” the masculine voice called out. “Beatrix, I told you the pen needed to be made taller.” “She didn’t leap over it,” came Beatrix’s protest, “she ate through it.” “Who let her into the house?” “No one. She butted one of the side doors open.” An inaudible conversation followed. As Christopher waited, a dark-haired boy of approximately four or five years of age made a breathless entrance through the front door. He was carrying a wooden sword and had tied a handkerchief around his head, which gave him the appearance of a miniature pirate. “Did they catch the goat?” he asked Christopher without preamble. “I believe so.” “Oh, thunderbolts. I missed all the fun.” The boy sighed. He looked up at Christopher. “Who are you?” “Captain Phelan. The child’s gaze sharpened with interest. “Where’s your uniform?” “I don’t wear it now that the war is over.” “Did you come to see my father?” “No, I…came to call on Miss Hathaway.” “Are you one of her suitors?” Christopher gave a decisive shake of his head. “You might be one,” the boy said wisely, “and just not know it yet.” Christopher felt a smile--his first genuine smile in a long time--pulling at his lips. “Does Miss Hathaway have many suitors?” “Oh, yes. But none of them want to marry her.” “Why is that, do you imagine?” “They don’t want to get shot,” the child said, shrugging. “Pardon?” Christopher’s brows lifted. “Before you marry, you have to get shot by an arrow and fall in love,” the boy explained. He paused thoughtfully. “But I don’t think the rest of it hurts as much as the beginning.” Christopher couldn’t prevent a grin. At that moment, Beatrix returned to the hallway, dragging the nanny goat on a rope lead. Beatrix looked at Christopher with an arrested expression. His smile faded, and he found himself staring into her blue-on-blue eyes. They were astonishingly direct and lucid…the eyes of a vagabond angel. One had the sense that no matter what she beheld of the sinful world, she would never be jaded. She reminded him that the things he had seen and done could not be polished away like tarnish from silver. Gradually her gaze lowered from his. “Rye,” she said, handing the lead to the boy. “Take Pandora to the barn, will you? And the baby goat as well.” Reaching out, she took the kid from Christopher’s arms. The touch of her hands against his shirtfront elicited an unnerving response, a pleasurable heaviness in his groin. “Yes, Auntie.” The boy left through the front door, somehow managing to retain possession of the goats and the wooden sword. Christopher stood facing Beatrix, trying not to gape. And failing utterly. She might as well have been standing there in her undergarments. In fact, that would have been preferable, because at least it wouldn’t have seemed so singularly erotic. He could see the feminine outline of her hips and thighs clad in the masculine garments. And she didn’t seem at all self-conscious. Confound her, what kind of woman was she?

So at least I could rest my soul knowing I had truly given it my all. And when my future child asks why I stopped pursuing a dream I had had for so many years, I can say with no regret, "The love I have for you and your mother is far greater than any dream.

PUBLISH YOUR BOOK TODAY The following is a direct quote from Amazon, and, if you are a real writer, it is one of the most fun things you will ever see in your life: This royalty payment notification is for Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) sales recorded in the Kindle Store. Payment will be made to your bank account and should appear in your available balance within 2 to 5 business days after the Payment Date. Details of the payment will be available on the Payment Report after it has been processed by your bank. The email that the above is quoted from comes for you every month, along with notes about payments from the various Kindle Stores in which you are selling, and they make you feel terrific. What a knockout: there is my money, flowing in as receivables each and every month, like clockwork, from all around the globe and waiting for me in my personal bank account, sitting there to use as I see fit. The statements show up in your every month, along with those from all your stores. They are a bit longer than the above quote, but sit back, close your eyes and visualize how wonderful it will be to have money rolling into your bank electronically, eliminating the bother of dithering around with checks. Right now, as your read this, the opportunity to earn a solid living, even to make a fortune with your books is real world and readily available for you. The revenue stream is just sitting there; it’s waiting for you to get busy, to write books and to learn to use Amazon as an amazing marketing tool poised and ready for your decision to pursue your dream. The trick for getting hot at book marketing—so you can actually be in a place for fully enjoying your life as an author/publisher—is to believe in yourself: to move right on past all your previous confusion: discouraging feedback from peers, friends and family; all self-doubt and blaming games; rejection slips from agents, publishers and magazines; and yes, even the ego trip of your treasured writer’s block . . . .

In late 2008, one of my business partners, Clayton Christensen offered his opinion that the recession would have an “unmitigated positive impact on innovation” because “when the tension is greatest and resources are most limited, people are actually a lot more open to rethinking the fundamental way they do business.” This theory is supported by the Kaufmann Foundation statistic that “51 percent of the Fortune 500 companies began during a recession or bear market or both.” Whether launching a business or pursuing a dream, there are many high-profile instances in which a lack of resources ultimately proved to be a boon, rather than a bane. If we dig a bit, each of us can uncover examples among friends and family, and ourselves. Would most children have as many opportunities as they do in sports, music, or other extracurricular activities without parents, mothers in particular, who are accomplished at bartering as a way to stretch limited family budgets? Would kids have as many chances to explore their interests if their parents weren’t so adept at arranging for carpooling, chaperoning, and borrowing, thus enabling their kids to participate? Without the constraints of time, money, and health, would the online retailer Shabby Apple exist? (For a reminder of how that business came to be, see chapter 5.) If my parents could have paid for college, would I have caught an early glimpse of corporate life during the Silicon Valley heyday? Would I have ever set foot on Wall Street had I not needed to work to put my husband through school? All of us have had the opportunity to bootstrap if we look hard enough. Men seem to know how to do this in the business world: 88 percent of the founders of Entrepreneur magazine’s Hot 500 were men. But I wonder if women aren’t better at bootstrapping than we think we are. Chronically under resourced (whether due to the gender pay gap or ceding our resources to conform to societal expectations), women continually feel the tension of having too little budget and too little time. Because of this tension, we are expert at rethinking how to get things done. Many of us know how to turn scarcity into opportunity.

Early on the morning of November 9, when it came time to decide on what I’d say in my concession speech, I remembered those words. Inspired by them, I wrote these: “To all the little girls who are watching this, never doubt that you are valuable and powerful and deserving of every chance and opportunity in the world to pursue and achieve your own dreams.” Wherever she is, I hope Emily Doe knows how much her words and her strength meant to so many.

Alas...we are women. Those who view every aspect of everything. I'm glad you're a force of nature that doesn't let the negative stop you from pursuing your dream. Let us inspire each other to reach the stars

There is so much to be grateful for, and the paradox is- I learned this after losing so much. After losing everything I feared, I gained an insight into how much I already have. I need no opportunity or approval to realize my dream. Instead, I can start realizing my dream with so much I already have. I learned that when you are on the path of pursuing your dream, great opportunities may or may not come on your way depending on the decisions you make and on the decisions others make on whom you are dependent.

it was not yet true what Dorothy Boyd, the secretary played by Renée Zellweger in the movie Jerry Maguire, tells her son about flying first-class: “It used to be a better meal, now it’s a better life.” I grew up in a time and place where the word “public” had deep resonance and engendered the highest respect as a source of innovation—as in public schools, public parks, public deliberations, and public-private partnerships. I grew up at a time and place when I was anchored in concentric communities and where the American Dream—“my parents did better than their parents and I will do better than mine”—seemed to be as certain as spring following winter, and summer following spring. And I grew up in a time and place where Jews were the biggest “minority” but gradually integrated themselves and were integrated by the dominant white, non-Jewish society and culture, and while it wasn’t always easy or pretty, somehow it happened. So where was this place over the rainbow and when was this time? The Land of Oz that I speak of was the state of Minnesota, and, for me, its Emerald City, where I grew up, was, as I said, a small suburb/town just outside of Minneapolis called St. Louis Park. The time (I was born July 20, 1953) was the 1950s, 1960s, and early 1970s. Growing up in that community at that time was a gift—a gift of enduring values and optimism—that has kept on giving my whole life. Three decades of reporting from the Middle East tried to leach that out of me. So, today, mine is not a naïve optimism that everything will turn out well; I’ve learned better. But it is an enduring confidence that things can turn out well, if people are ready to practice a politics of compromise and pursue an ethic of pluralism.

Summary of Rule #3 Rules #1 and #2 laid the foundation for my new thinking on how people end up loving what they do. Rule #1 dismissed the passion hypothesis, which says that you have to first figure out your true calling and then find a job to match. Rule #2 replaced this idea with career capital theory, which argues that the traits that define great work are rare and valuable, and if you want these in your working life, you must first build up rare and valuable skills to offer in return. I call these skills “career capital,” and in Rule #2 I dived into the details of how to acquire it. The obvious next question is how to invest this capital once you have it. Rule #3 explored one answer to this question by arguing that gaining control over what you do and how you do it is incredibly important. This trait shows up so often in the lives of people who love what they do that I’ve taken to calling it the dream-job elixir. Investing your capital in control, however, turns out to be tricky. There are two traps that commonly snare people in their pursuit of this trait. The first control trap notes that it’s dangerous to try to gain more control without enough capital to back it up. The second control trap notes that once you have the capital to back up a bid for more control, you’re still not out of the woods. This capital makes you valuable enough to your employer that they will likely now fight to keep you on a more traditional path. They realize that gaining more control is good for you but not for their bottom line. The control traps put you in a difficult situation. Let’s say you have an idea for pursuing more control in your career and you’re encountering resistance. How can you tell if this resistance is useful (for example, it’s helping you avoid the first control trap) or something to ignore (for example, it’s the result of the second control trap)? To help navigate this control conundrum, I turned to Derek Sivers. Derek is a successful entrepreneur who has lived a life dedicated to control. I asked him his advice for sifting through potential control-boosting pursuits and he responded with a simple rule: “Do what people are willing to pay for.” This isn’t about making money (Derek, for example, is more or less indifferent to money, having given away to charity the millions he made from selling his first company). Instead, it’s about using money as a “neutral indicator of value”—a way of determining whether or not you have enough career capital to succeed with a pursuit. I called this the law of financial viability, and concluded that it’s a critical tool for navigating your own acquisition of control. This holds whether you are pondering an entrepreneurial venture or a new role within an established company. Unless people are willing to pay you, it’s not an idea you’re ready to go after.

What was my reaction when I was suddenly assigned a good-looking and understanding ‘big brother’? During my early days at the boarding school, did I open up immediately to my ‘big brother’ Nikee or to other ‘big brothers’ in my House? I was like a fish swimming happily in water. I took to my ‘big brother’ Nikee like I had discovered gold in a hidden treasure trove. All the ‘big brothers’ had undergone special educational training before being assigned to a ‘little brother’. They were trained in the art of listening to the needs of their charges. Even for the BBs that were not E.R.O.S. members, the boarding school had training programs for ‘regular’ students who wanted to mentor the juniors following in their footsteps. All BBs and BSs (in our sister schools) had been through a one-year mentorship training program before becoming BBs and BSs. Therefore, whenever I had a problem and I needed advice, I was able to go to any BB of my choosing and confide to him. Most boys tended to disclose their quandaries to their allocated BBs because they seemed to understand us best. The answer to your last question, was I unreserved by nature or was it a learned trait? The answer is both. As much as I am a happy-go-lucky person, I also learned many methods and techniques to come out of my shell. Daltonbury Hall, Bahriji and E.R.O.S. turned me, in part, into the person I am today. This valuable training helped me pursue my dreams through the art of positive human relations. This is one of the main objectives of the Enlightened Royal Oracle Society: to be responsible citizens of the world. Dr. Arius, I’m ready for your next installment of queries. Keep them coming. With love and affection, Young.

Pursuing this dream wasn’t about getting to the ending I’d envisioned in my head. It actually wasn’t about getting to an ending at all.

These are not sketches.” “They’re not?” Before Jenny could grab the bag back, Louisa extracted a sheaf of letters. “Oh, good. Some are written in German, and I do enjoy German. This one’s Italian, and there are several in French. This must be… I didn’t know Elijah had a grasp of Russian.” “He spent a year in St. Petersburg. Let me see those.” Louisa handed over one, the first one in French, and watched while Jenny translated. “Oh, that dear, dratted, man. That dear, dear…” Rather than listen to Jenny prattle on, Louisa translated another of the French missives. “These are letters of introduction. Your dear, dratted man has written you letters of introduction all over the Continent. This one is written in French but addressed to some Polish count. This one is to some fellow on Sicily. Will I ever see you again?” “There are ruins on Sicily. Greek, Roman, Norman… Beautiful ruins.” What that had to do with anything mattered little compared to the ruins Louisa beheld in her sister’s eyes. “Was he trying to send you away?” Jenny handed Louisa the letter, watching with a hungry gaze as Louisa tucked the epistles back into their traveling bag. “I didn’t ask Elijah for those letters, and I won’t use them.” “Why in blazes not?” Blazes was not quite profanity. When a woman became responsible for small children, her vocabulary learned all manner of detours. “Because he’ll never get into the Academy if he’s seen promoting the career of a woman in the arts. The Academy has been his goal and his dream for years, and he’s given up years of time among his family to pursue it. There’s unfortunate history between one of the committee members and Elijah’s mother, and it will obstruct Elijah’s path if he’s seen to further my artistic interests. I would not jeopardize Elijah’s happiness for anything.” Elijah.

So, my dream has sort of come true in a roundabout way. I guess I just had to pursue it to find out what it was.

I'd rather fail miserably pursuing my dreams than succeed at something I have to settle for.

I can only be obedient to what He tells me to do and leave the rest up to Him. My worth is found in my identity in Christ. I can honestly say the times I’ve grown the most and have been the happiest were when I suffered the most. When I struggled to find my purpose. Those were the times I grew exponentially. Maybe they weren’t easy or glamorous, but God met me there. In the desert, He met me. In the valley of the shadow of death, He met me. “The impact God has planned for us doesn’t occur when we’re pursuing impact. It occurs when we’re pursuing God.

So I saw that there is nothing better for men than that they should be happy in their work, for that is what they are here for, and no one can bring them back to life to enjoy what will be in the future, so let them enjoy it now. —Ecclesiastes 3:22 (TLB) Recently, I learned that a book on friendship that I’d written with my best friend, Melanie, was rejected by a publisher who had been very positive about it for over two years. I was devastated. All those months and years of writing, rewriting, and then reworking it again…only to have it rejected in the end. I was ready to give up my career altogether, retire, and concentrate on biking, swimming, kayaking, and traveling. Then I read something my pen pal Oscar had written about his own retirement twenty-five years earlier. He wrote that in retirement we must have direction and purpose, accept change, remain curious and confident, communicate, and be committed. The longer I looked at his list, the more it spoke to me. Why, those are the very attributes I need to be a good writer, I thought. So I decided to buckle down and rework other unsold manuscripts I’d written over the years. Using Oscar’s plan of direction, purpose, confidence, and commitment helped me to stop telling people that I didn’t have any marketing genes and to keep busy rewriting and looking for different publishers. I may never sell all of my work, but I’m living a life filled with purpose. And I’m a whole lot happier in my semiretirement than if I was just playing every day, all day. Father, give me purpose in life whether it’s volunteer work, pursuing dreams, reworking an old career, or finding a new way to use the talents You’ve given me. —Patricia Lorenz Digging Deeper: Prv 16:9; Rom 12:3–8

If I can do enough of the right things, I will have established my value. Identity is the sum of my achievements. Hence, if I can satisfy the boss, meet the needs of my spouse and children, and still pursue my dreams, then I will be somebody. In Christian theology, such a position is called justification by works. It assumes that my worth is measured by my performance. Conversely, it conceals a dark and ghastly fear: If I do not perform, I will be judged unworthy. To myself I will cease to exist.

I will pursue my dreams wholeheartedly.

I will pursue my dreams with all my strength.

Jason levels a glare at me and says slowly, “You cannot stop me from pursuing this farm.” I taste the bitterness of adrenaline and betrayal in my constricted throat. Thoughts bing around my head in an enraged electrical storm. How dare you cast me as the pisser-on-er of dreams! I put up a halfhearted fight against angry tears and succumb. Having done my fair share of food industry service, I can tell you that nothing, nothing unnerves waitstaff like the fighting couple with the crying woman seated in one’s station. I remember glancing up for a second and seeing our waitress do a sort of horrified back-and-forth shuffle with our meals as she looked for an opportunity to throw them on our table and bolt. But that right moment was elusive, as I wasn’t engaged in dignified weeping into one’s napkin. I rarely cry, but when I do, it’s full-on bawling with shallow, gasping breaths. The kind that can really get the snot flowing. The kind that produces honking.

Always take the job, pursue the life, and have the friends that allow you to have as much freedom as possible. I asked Nassim Taleb on my podcast what job should one have. He said, “night watchman, because nobody is around to bother you and you can pursue all your dreams on the side.

The keeping of this secret prevented me from having closer ties with my daughter, my sister, my community. It kept me from earnestly pursuing love. So, when I was recently diagnosed with HIV, I realized I could not keep my orientation or my status secret any longer. There was too much at risk.

Life dreams aren’t fantasies for the imagination; they are real goals to pursue. I believed that my dreams could come to life if only I dreamed strong enough and put that same energy into trying to accomplish them. I wanted to live my dreams (or die trying).

The thing is, your unconscious mind is smart. There’s usually a reason when absolutely nothing at all comes up; having absolutely no feelings, thoughts or sensations is actually a very unusual state. Your mind has to try hard to make that happen. So, if it keeps happening, this might suggest that controlled precognition is not for you, not right now at least. Your unconscious mind, particularly your superconscious or what we call your “higher self”, might know that getting involved in controlled precognition would be destabilizing for you. Likely because you would learn about parts of yourself that are not great for you to access without some kind of safe help. So maybe it’s saying “no” in the way it knows how to do that. This is fine, and you should listen. If you still want to pursue controlled precognition, seek a mental health professional that you trust and start exploring what might be hiding in your subconscious. Odds are, once your unconscious mind feels like controlled precognition is safe for you, you’ll come back to it and it will be much better for you and less destabilizing than it would have been before seeking help. Usually, however, the problem is the reverse: so many seemingly random images, thoughts and sensations come up that people feel overwhelmed and end up with garbage in their controlled precognition sessions. That’s why the six-step controlled precognition protocol was created, so you can learn to carefully perform controlled precognition, learning to weed out the fantasy thoughts and concentrate on those impressions that are delivered to you without further elaboration by story telling. What if I don’t remember any of my dreams? That can happen for many reasons. One is that you might have had a traumatic experience, and you might not be ready to re-live it in your dreams. If this is the case, I would say don’t worry about remembering your dreams. You can use controlled precognition to sense the future, and if you want to work with a mental health professional to work through the trauma to make it safe to remember your dreams, then you can do that independently. If you’re sure you want to remember your dreams, here’s a list of things to try. When we’re lucky, life is long … try them all! • Write down your dreams every morning, and when you don’t have any, write down, “I don’t remember my dreams right now, but I might later. And if I do, I’ll record them.” That gets you in the daily habit, and it sets an intention that tells your subconscious that you’re ready to start remembering dreams. • Make sure you get enough vitamin B-6, found in eggs, nuts, vegetables, wholegrains and milk, as it seems to enhance dream clarity as compared to a placebo. • Try to go to bed at a time that feels good to you. • Turn off wi-fi at night in your house, if you have a router. • Don’t look at any screens within one hour of going to bed.

A world that confuses luxury with success, has absolutely zero understanding of the human condition. That's why they idolize rich and filthy celebrities with private jets and rolls royce, as some sort of demigods. If this is your idea of success, then you guys are more disgustingly primitive than the wildlife in the amazon. At least, wild animals don't pretend to be civilized. Riches maketh filth, filth pursue riches. To live a life of luxury, or to dream of a life of luxury, doesn't make us ambitious, it only exposes the moron that we are. A species that has not realized simplicity as the way of life, will never in a million years have a society without disease and disparity. I won't mince my words, and tell you straight. Wanna be a decent human being? Stay away from luxury. Because luxury is a violation of human rights, human health, and above all, human character. It's funny really! Some people can't afford two wholesome meals a day, while others live with a private airport in their backyard. Some parents work their butt off to keep the clothes on their children's back, while others shower their kids with lamborghinis and teslas. If this doesn't open your eyes, perhaps you should try lobotomy. I'm sure you can find some unlicensed surgeon somewhere who'd do it for you if you offer them a trip to the bahamas, or better yet, a trip to space in your own spaceship.

My prayer is that every committed disciple would imagine themselves responsible for the future formation of the church. To dream about starting something small that is very much the church for their lives. To see it as something intimate and precious. To make the fundamental shift from believing the church is something someone else starts and runs that we choose and consume, to believing the church is something like a family that each of us pursues in the course of our life with God. The where of it then is less important than the who. The end result will be as fascinating, diverse, and wonderful as every family. Church then is not a building or set of programs. It is a value we live out, a close relationship with others, and in each sincere expression, in each yearning community, God is there. One of Jesus’ first promises to his people is that whenever two or more are gathered in his name, he will be there in the midst of us

The search for my roots with the crew from Who Do You Think You Are? took me first from Pensacola, Florida, where I grew up, to Burnt Corn, Alabama, where my father’s mother’s family lived, and then on to Mecklenburg County, Virginia, where my ancestors were owned as plantation slaves.

When I express my gratitude and thanks in prayer, a sense of peace almost always comes over me. I feel cleansed and renewed in my relationship with Jesus, even more motivated to serve him and discover his purpose for me. Giving thanks is important, but an attitude of gratitude is about more than expressing it in words and prayers.

My point is that what lies around you does not have to live within you. How you begin life is not nearly as important as how you end up. You can rise above whatever tries to hold you down as long as you stay focused on your dreams.

And ever since the love of our grandparents sparked a change in my brother, when I watch Grandpa Amos lay Grandma’s favorite flowers at her gravesite the first Saturday of each month, I pray God will allow me to meet a man just like that. Someone who will show courage despite their circumstances to be with me, someone who will love me even after my final breath and would never consider stopping. Someone who will lead me to further pursue my relationship with Christ, who will teach every generation that comes through our family what true Love is. But, as of right now, I’m fourteen years old, and have never had a serious crush. With all I have to live up to, who knows if I ever will.

I CHOOSE FAITH OVER FEAR. I have complete and total confidence that I have what it takes to accomplish the dreams in my heart. Most failures are a result of people falling to their fears and worries. I am fearless. I am fully-committed to pursuing my dreams, developing the unique talents I’ve been blessed with, and becoming the person I was born to be. I know that if I give my absolute best today, I can safely trust God to put me where I need to be and to make sure that everything works out for the best. I believe I am here for a reason and I have everything I need to fulfill my purpose in life. Success follows faith and I have unbreakable faith.

Be Great My Child This is your own journey I cannot tell so easily Exactly how to navigate But I am here to guide you Because I truly care And wish to see you prosper My darling, whatever life brings along Find ways to deal with it Acknowledge each season Pursue your God-given purpose Choose what is right Forget that which is not Be wiser as you grow old Live the best way you can Love yourself more and more Learn to embrace who you are Say a prayer each day Create beautiful memories Dream big and be happy Wake up, make your dreams a reality Walk towards prosperity And build a long-lasting legacy Whatsoever you do child, be great!

Graveyard of Dreams (The Sonnet) When the heart is born in the middle of a desert, Is it wrong for them to set out in search of water! Or should the heart remain a handicapped patriot, Never to realize and manifest their rightful power! No heart is ever known by the land they are born in, Heart is known by the light it pours out into the world. I say, cut off all allegiance to the intolerant desert, And seek out the land where your roots are watered. Heart's allegiance is only to light, not to some puny tribe, Land your feet where they greet you with garland, not shackles. Those who continue to peddle patriotism to guilt trap the genius, Are the last people to deserve exclusive rights to light universal. Seek out an environment conducive to your light, Instead of being chained to the graveyard of dreams. Wield your light with all your conviction and dignity, And you'll illuminate all, even the dreamkilling fiends.

Our Mothers Your eyes see hope for tomorrow Your hearts are made of gold that many wish to borrow Your minds sharp enough for others follow Your hands ensure that children grow Your feet go places where some cannot know Your courage makes you stand where strong winds blow Your presence becomes warmth, regardless of the snow Your influence can be felt within a stone’s throw You hold nothing back for whom you protect You speak words with good intent You treat others with so much respect You fight and never retract You pursue a path that keeps your faith intact You fulfil dreams and make a significant impact You pass through tough times while remaining steadfast You conquer battles as you pray and fast You instil discipline that becomes a great shield You serve others until they succeed You give inspiration among those who bleed You understand that you are rearing a rare breed You plant and nurture the right seed You help attract breakthroughs with speed You care for those in need You touch lives, indeed You lead your own to be great every step of the way You play your role very well, even without a pay You smile as if every day is your pay day You exude wisdom and put it on full display You save generations from going astray You run your race just like in a relay You pass the baton with no delay You carry so much worth as you get to be gray Hence, we salute you, our Mothers

Seek out an environment conducive to your light, instead of being chained to the graveyard of dreams.

LORD, This world is a broken, painful place for my son to navigate as he grows. He’ll experience physical illness and injuries. Trusted friends and family may betray his confidence. The dreams he holds for the future may crumble. Goals he works hard to achieve can end in failure. He may find himself lonely, broke, sick, or disappointed. As he looks for ways to relieve his pain or find distraction from his troubles, he may end up looking in all the wrong places. Keep my son from the trap of addiction as he seeks comfort in this world. The pleasures of food, alcohol, sex, entertainment, drugs, and money can offer a temporary diversion from the pain in his heart. But these same pleasures can become a trap that steals his freedom to live in your peace and righteousness. Don’t let my son’s heart become enslaved to anything or anyone but you. Let him find his greatest satisfaction in your presence. Give him discernment to identify temptations that come his way. May he have strength to “flee the evil desires of youth and pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace, along with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart” (2 Tim. 2: 22). Surround my son with believers who will encourage him to walk in your ways. Give him humility to ask for help if he’s overtaken by any sin. Open my eyes to see any areas of bondage that are developing in his life. Show me the boundaries to set to guard him from temptations that may be too hard to resist. Show my son that you are his true comfort. You offer a future of perfect peace and love with you. Your plans for him are good and perfect. You are his one true, faithful friend. You are the source of everything he needs. You hold the answers to all of his questions. Let my son live in your freedom. Keep his eyes on you. May he offer his life fully to you and obey you with all his heart. Amen.

It's not selfish to run away from insult, Better run away than retaliate with harm. Even mindless cavemen have a right to live, Even if they know not the worth of the sun.

So, stay or run - do as you like, Do whatever helps you shine your light. Places are myths, only the person is real, Person is the source of all light and sight.

Ambition in Motion (The Sonnet) Come hell or high water, Never let caution cripple your feet. Better to fall hard and learn a lesson, Than speculate forever with couched feet. Everything I've achieved is by trial and error, There was no handbook to aid my mission. Maps to known paths are available plenty, But there is no map to uncharted destination. You are the handbook to your ambition, Not your background or family treasures. If you persist long enough, at some point, Your persistence will outrun your failures. Better fail than frozen - failure is the foundation. Failure is the first sign of ambition in motion.

Better fail than frozen.

If you persist long enough, at some point, your persistence will outrun your failures.

This saying challenged me to keep focused, to know my vision, and to look ahead to God’s plans for my life. No distractions, no pit stops, no wrong turns. It wasn’t until after I decided to pursue God’s purpose for me that I eventually came face to face with the man of my dreams. As we were both looking ahead to God’s plans for our lives, our stories collided in a miraculous and unexpected way.

The average career for an NFL running back, according to the NFL Players Association, is just 2.57 years. If I’d chosen to focus on my fears of a career-ending injury, I probably would not have lasted fifteen seasons. Injuries occur in football, and players have little control over that. All we can do is strengthen our bodies and play as smart as we can. I chose to focus on what I could control and developed the warrior mentality of David, the shepherd boy. I managed my fears and doubts by putting my faith and trust in my heavenly Father. Then I fought with all my heart to be the best I could possibly be. Probably

Earn money, make friends, find a partner, buy a house, go on vacations, complain, have fun, complain, have more fun, complain again, pay the bills, try to get ahead, pursue a dream or two, more vacations, pay more bills, more house, more car, try to get along with my family—you get the picture. I mean, it’s what everyone else was doing, so why not? It’s probably a lot like yours too.

I have spoken over the years to many artists, musicians, innovators, athletes, thinkers, poets, entrepreneurs, big dreamers from all walks of life, and there is a secret conversation that always seems to arise: How can we fully pursue and realize our visions while at the same time cultivating love, a thriving family, and fulfilling relationships? And here's the harsh reality for everyone who loves a dreamer: Everything comes second to the dream. The attainment of my dream became an act of survival. In my darkest nights, my dream saved my life - it was my light, my food. My vision of brighter days sustained me. It was my whole purpose. Failure equaled death. My belief was, When I get to the top of this mountain, I will never be scared or sad again. I'll never be abused or disrespected or unloved. And there is nothing I am unwilling to leave or to lose to get there. And anyone who opposes or impedes my progress is my enemy.

This type of education is not designed to help students discover their passions, develop their strengths, or pursue their dreams.

I'm the heart of a person and people's hearts are that way. People are afraid to pursue their most important dreams, because they feel that they don’t deserve them, or that they’ll be unable to achieve them. We, their hearts, become fearful just thinking of loved ones who go away forever, or of moments that could have been good but weren’t, or of treasures that might have been found but were forever hidden in the sands. Because, when these things happen, we suffer terribly.” “My heart is afraid that it will have to suffer,” the boy told the alchemist one night as they looked up at the moonless sky. “Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself.