Childhood Dreams - Can They Come True?

 

This week we studied “The Last Lecture” by Randy Pausch in BUS 110. I’ve been assigned to journal on a few of the insights I received from this talk.

Randy Pausch was a college professor and virtual reality expert that gave a lecture on realizing his childhood dreams. What was different about this particular lecture, was that Randy, a young husband and father in his late 40s, was dying of terminal pancreatic cancer. Despite the dire diagnosis, his lecture was not morose – it was hopeful, it was even joyful. Joyful because he explained how he was able to realize his childhood dreams, not all exactly in the way he imagined as a child, but in some form or another.

There were many factors that helped him to accomplish this. One that stood out to me was encouraging parents. Parents that recognized his potential and gave him freedom to explore. His parents also taught him the value of going to work and not complaining. Randy learned that complaining is a waste of time and energy. I loved the comment from his mom when he was a college freshman and complaining about something at school – Mom patted him on the shoulder and said, “And when Dad was your age, he was fighting Germans.” Bam.

When I was a kid, I could spend hours daydreaming about my future, what I wanted to become and do. I feel like it so much harder to do that as an adult! I’m not sure why. Probably kids, church callings, work, and life-stuff happens and we run out of spare time, or so we think. Now that I am an empty nester, I still find it challenging to dream the way I could when I was little. I almost feel that dreaming is like a muscle, and if you don’t use it, you lose it. Maybe it is important as adults to pencil in time to daydream and journal about our dreams in order to strengthen that muscle again.

One of my childhood dreams was to travel around the world. My grandfather was a merchant marine during WW2, The Korean Conflict and Vietnam. He had a 9^th grade education but was a voracious reader. He knew so much about geography and different cultures. That stuff fascinated me. Long before we had TSA, Papa and I would go stand up against a fence that separated the road from the runway at LAX while jets were landing. He could tell where the planes were coming from by their livery. I knew I wanted to go someplace exotic on one of those planes someday. Have I traveled around the world? I’ve been fortunate to visit a lot of places, exotic places – Hawaii, Dubai, The Maldives. Old world places – the Alpine countries, France and England. I’ve been able to visit beautiful places in my own country. So yes, I’ve started to realize that childhood dream, and I admit I am hungry for more and that my dream has not been completely satisfied, but if I could never travel again, I know I am blessed to have been able to see a lot of the world.