Secret Things

I remember wanting to be the President of the United States. As the President, I would make sure that each student in school would have a personal drinking fountain and mini refrigerator on the top of their desk. Also, I would build a mote around the White House and I would go canoing in that mote during my "spare" time. My mind was literally filled with dreams, inventions and aspirations--all thoughts that I would surely turn into realities some day.

I am convinced that each person in life is born with a little seed tucked away deep inside of them. This seed contains the dreams and aspirations that said person will develop as a child. Ballerinas, firemen, artists, and doctors fill the crystal-clear dreams of children and dominate the wish-lists of their hearts. Children are overflowing with ideas that they are bound and determined to make happen as soon as possible. They want to be hair stylists so they use their brother or sister for experimental purposes. They feel like they are called to be a doctor so they rip the arm off of their teddy bear and then tape it on with band-aids. The artist in them is ready to come out so they make their masterpiece on the dining room walls. They find an injured bird on the sidewalk and either their veterinarian instincts help nurse it back to health or their mortician genes dig it a pretty grave. The creativity seed inside of children is constantly producing results of some sort, but sadly society seems quick to smash and crush the seed shortly after children reach the double-digits.

I've grown far past the days of whimsical thinking, and to some extent the dreams that now occupy my mind are attainable. But there are a few childhood dreams that I have kept tucked away. I've worked hard keeping my little seed alive.

It's interesting that the dreams that I always thought were so big, so far away, and so awesome are now the dreams that I consider realities. I remember dreaming about an adventure to Africa. I wrote about it on a wish list in grade school. It's funny, but one day shortly after I returned from a three-month excursion to Uganda, East Africa, I found a folder of papers from grade school. Inside that folder I found the list, and I realized that I had made one of my secret dreams come true.

Now, I have another wish list. It's filled with the same starry-eyed hope that filled the last wish list--but this time it's from something different than the little seed inside of me. You see, I took care of that seed and now deep inside the very dirt of my being I have a garden. It is my garden of dreams. My seed of hope, of faith that I had as a child has grown to bear fruit of passion and of drive.

The dreams that I have set before me, those secret things that are tucked away--I know I will attain. I know because I saw one list of dreams become a list of realities.

I have another list of dreams--but I call them "my tomorrows."