“…we know that no one excels at dreaming and having fun more than kids.”
So stated Jim Berra, Chief Marketing Officer for Carnival Cruise Lines, in recently announcing a contest for kids, with the winner set to become the world’s first-ever cruise ship waterslide Godchild. To enter, kids simply have to complete the sentence: “I’m always dreaming up fun stuff. Wouldn’t it be awesome if…” and to submit a corresponding hand-drawn illustration.
Berra’s comment got me thinking: What does it mean to be able to dream like kids do in this way? According to the dictionary, in this figurative sense dreaming means to imagine, to think possible. As you know, this was the meaning made famous in MLK Jr.’s 8/28/1963 “I have a dream…” speech.
Unfortunately for most adults, something at sometime extinguished this seemingly innate ability to dream and have fun. Especially the dreaming part. Instead we have become complicit in mediocrity so that, as Thoreau observed in the first chapter of Walden, most of us “lead lives of quiet desperation.” That was written way back in 1854 at the dawning of the Industrial Age; I wonder what he would say of the way we live our lives today?
Here’s what one current influential American recently noted about modern living: “The way things are these days it seems a lot of people feel they’ve lost control.” [blogpost by Donald J. Trump, 8/11/2009]
I put to you that one symptom of this loss of control is the inability to dream of new ways of living our lives. Instead people resign themselves to the way things are, and in essence become victims of their present circumstances. Those circumstances may induce unhappiness due to unsatisfying jobs or breaking relationships or poor health; the list is endless.
But the good news is that as long as we have life we have the potential within us to change. It’s our wonderful minds which hold the key to new imaginings. Try to spend some quiet time thinking and planning ways to better yourself. For sure, few of us will have the luxury of putting our busy lives on hold to spend 2 years doing this as did Thoreau. But maybe if we devoted just 2 days to deep thought this may be enough to spark the beginning of a better way of life for us and our families.
In his concluding chapter of Walden, Thoreau noted: “I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.”
First we need the dreams; we need to conceive of new possibilities. With our life experience and maturity surely we can out-dream the kids! I say it’s now time for us to reclaim the ability to dream and imagine.
Personal disclaimer:
On January 9 I’m taking my wife on the Carnival Dream for a 7-day western Caribbean cruise. I’ll be there as a guest of Mike Filsaime and be privileged to learn from some of the world’s top Internet marketers he’s assembling for this annual event. Believe me, I won’t want to keep that knowledge to myself, so between now and then I invite you to sign up and join my Massive Action group of Internet go-getters.
I have a dream! Do you?
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