The Truth about Dreams

I'm not talking about the crazy ones you have while you're sleeping. I'm talking about the outrageous ones you have when you are perfectly conscious.

Dreams. Aspirations. Goals. Deadlines. Promises. Responsibility.

If you have a dream, you have a lot of work ahead of you. That's the bottom line to getting anywhere.

Luck you say? Yes, luck helps. But luck only takes you so far.

For example, you dream to be rich, you win the lottery, but then you waste it on bad investments and it's gone in three years. Because luck isn't enough to make your dreams come true.

What I've learned about dreams is that the bigger they are, the more work they take. Okay, maybe I'm the last one to put the two together, but the ratio is startling.

If you want to make it big in writing, you have to commit a huge portion of your life to getting there. Your time, talent, emotions and mental capabilities will all be on the line.

I know a lot of my posts are about writing, but this one is going to be about the dream I'm spending my brain power on lately.

For those of you who are not familiar with Irish dance, this may seem petty. Sorry.

What I'm attempting to do involves learning and absolutely memorizing 30 ceili dances (traditional group dances). Not only will I have to take an extensive written exam on these dances, but I will have to successfully teach whatever piece of whichever dance they ask me to on the day of the exam.

And I need to know 38 tunes along with the timing and bars in each section and recognize the difference between even more music.

Of course, there will be dancing. I'm learning a lot of new dances right now. Most everything I will be testing with is new pieces from An Daire that I only recently joined in October.

What am I forgetting? Oh yeah. I have to be able to teach any level of dancer any dance that I submit and likely more than one level dancer at the same time.

Maybe you can see why I can't stop thinking about Irish dancing- even in my sleep. Why I take the Ar Rinci Foirne with me wherever I go to study instead of reading books.

It's a ton of work. Right now it looks like the impossible dream.

But failing is not an option for me. I need to do this for a lot of reasons. Ironically, the most important reason isn't for myself, it's for the Boise An Daire dancers. The second reason is to prove to myself once and for all that I can do it. I'm already so deep into Irish dancing that this really is the next thing I need to do.

And then, even though this may sound strange, I'm doing this for my kids. It's insurance that no matter what else happens in life, they will have a TCRG around to teach them part of their heritage. It's more than a dance to me, it's part of who I am. It's part of my whole family.

Last St. Patrick's Day I had no one to Irish dance with. It was the first St. Patrick's day that my kids had ever gone to school. We've always performed throughout the community on that day. But there we were without a group to dance with.

And though I missed my ghillies like a fish misses water, I learned that dancing is not something anyone has the right to take away from someone. And so I will become the giver. I will help others learn what it's like to fly, because that's what Irish dancing is to me.