Dream a Little Dream For Me…

Today is one of those days – the sky is clouded, the rain is falling, the streets are littered with people who simply cannot drive in the freaking weather. Today is one of those days where you sit back and dream about what could be.

What you wish would be.

What you secretly hope someday still MAY be.

And then the clouds and the rain and the street-littering idiots bring you back to reality. The dream goes poof. Or as Langston Hughes said, it explodes.

Most of us will go on with our day as if nothing ever happened. Most of us will silently slog into our offices, content to sit down to our emails and paperwork, settling into the comfortable groove we have established for ourselves, a groove that tells us things are good – don’t upset the apple cart.

And most of us will remain secretly miserable because, for that one moment, we held our dreams in our hands and believed that sacred piece of our imagination just might become a real, living, actual. Then, we’ll let those dreams go and be miserable again.

And we’ll withstand that misery because of the comfort of the groove.

Well, I learned yesterday that when vinyl records developed a groove from the persistent playing of a particular track they are incapable of playing as a complete album. In other words, you might start the album, but you’ll never finish it because the groove will capture the needle. Take it hostage, as it were.

What a horrible metaphor for life – to begin with promise and music and difference, only to fall into a groove from which you can’t escape, a groove that leaves the rest of the album un-played, unfinished. How many of us feel like that on a daily basis? Or hell, how many of us feel like that every once in a while when the rain is falling and the clouds are moving and the dreariness of the groove releases for a moment in the face of our dream?

Today is one of those days. Rain. Clouds. Idiots. Dreams.

Groove?

Not on your life. Today, Pinocchio, you are indeed a real boy.

Today, what could be becomes what will be. But only if you’re willing to go for it.

And to help you, here’s an Academy Award winning song to motivate you. And if the fact that this song won an Academy Award doesn’t tell you that the most unlikely things can happen to those who follow their dreams, then my friend, enjoy the groove.