May all your dreams but one come true, for what is life without a dream?
Hopes were wallflowers. Hopes hugged the perimeter of a dance floor in your brain, tugging at their party lace, all perfume and hems and doomed expectation. They fanned their dance cards, these guests that pressed against the walls of your heart.
Those opportunity gaps begin early, often at birth. And they compound over time, becoming harder and harder to bridge, making too many young men and women feel like, no matter how hard they try, they may never achieve their dreams.
Living a life fully engaged and full of whimsy and the kind of things that love does is something most people plan to do, but along the way they just kind of forget. Their dreams become one of those "we'll go there next time" deferrals. The sad thing is, for many there is no "next time" because passing on the chance to cross over is an overall attitude toward life rather than a single decision.
Before I left for Germany, I had gotten accepted to the performing arts high school in New York, which was a big dream of mine. And having to leave that was very sad for me.
We thought our careers as cosmonauts - we were young then - would end with a flight to Mars. But, you see, life has made some course corrections.
You've got to have something to retire to. Something you always wanted to do but your job prevented it.
