“To voyage the difficult path in life we must dare to dream” ~Antonio McDonald
A man that dares to dream must take the difficult path in life; everything against our goals must be kept away from our mind. Everything that brings us closer into the attainment of our desire must take precedence over the entire world. Courage must come along with our desire; we must live within the extremes of dedication and combat the negative and scrupulous nonsense that prevents us from believing in the impact our work can have on the world. When you decide to take complete control over your life that is only the beginning of the perilous journey to adulthood. Self awareness, while painful, is how we come to terms with the people we have become; we must acknowledge the person that hides from the light and bring them out for correction and love. We must not run from our responsibilities and distract ourselves with the noise infesting our lives. Most of our experience cannot be fully assessed or expressed but in this brief life we must find a way to involve ourselves in the mystery. We must not ask for permission to live our lives, and must avoid at all cost looking outwardly for permission to live. Only we can journey through this life and create from the things we are given something meaningful; one must ask himself would he die for the life he is living. Are you willing to devote your life to the things you give your attention to?
We must draw close to our dreams and build a life around the necessity of living them; we must dare to express our ideal life. The difficulty of believing in a reality we have never seen anyone accomplish requires us to dive within our sorrows, daydreams and discover the glimpses of beauty that sit within our lives. We must call forth the wealth that exists in our lives, so we can utilize it for the creation of our being. We must sink into our own world and pull from the resources of our childhood and everything that shaped us. What kind of kid were you before the world touched you? Before the age of 12 or 13, what touched your soul the most? The only way we can move through a ruthless world that has little regard for hopes, dreams, or fantasies is by living from a source that is a wellspring for us. Discovering our internal well-spring gives us the faith to live without asking anyone for permission to live. Many people preach unloving words to themselves, and talk to others the way they talk to themselves; when someone sees you dreaming and becoming it’s an attack on all their insecurities. But we made the mistake of looking outward for answers that can only be answered internally, we can not live within the comprehension of the world. Not dreaming neglects the consciousness of the world. The mind of creatives enhanced the world: Baldwin, Goethe, Rilke, Ellison, or Dostoyevsky all brought us closer to seeing the beauty in our daily lives.
“And I was alone, had been for a while, and might be for a while, but it no longer frightened me the way it had. I was discovering something terrifyingly simple: there was absolutely nothing I could do about it.” — James Baldwin
A man dependent on the world for his next move is an anxious man; this man cannot experience the healing effects of freedom. He lives within the parameters of a life set for him, and, ironically, the cage becomes smaller and smaller as time passes. Through living internally, all of life is captured in its majesty, grace, and discovery; we reach a faith in our infinite loneliness and discover only love can do us justice. We discover the importance of staying true to our feelings; a difficulty of most people is allowing life to happen and judging because we do not know the outcome of our circumstances. We do not know the results of the pain or triumphs so we have a tendency to become resentful of pain and territorial of joy. We must allow life to unfold before us; making no judgments, only committing ourselves to love. It is our spiritual and world responsibility, I believe, to devote ourselves entirely to our crafts and live from that devotion. Patience is at the heart of devotion; we must not worry ourselves with the result of the work, but must commit ourselves totally to the work itself.
“Time eludes measurement”- Rainer Maria Rilke
We must allow ourselves to become and stand tall in the midst of our darkest hour; fear of failure disturbs every man’s creative process, but the one that stays the extra hour reaps the benefits when summer arrives. We must carry an equanimity in our breast and allow the steps to explode from us within our infinite patience and aloneness. Only we can answer the questions that rise from the depth of our being; we all have a tendency to relinquish control of our lives and look out into the world for answers to questions that demand our attention. Our dreams and passions are to be lived; they are an explosion from the unconscious expressing our possibilities and surpassing our self-imposed limitations. Which means our visions are of God; stagnation comes when there is a wedge between ourselves and the belief in our possibilities.
“Not art and science only, but patience will be required for the work.”-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
We are all participating and collaborating with the creation of a more noble existence; we all add to the creation of harmony and pleasure by moving through our suffering with the same nobleness as we move through pleasure. With every unrequited love, failure, despair, fear of becoming your environment rest the nurturing love and moments that contained such captivating beauty we have a tendency to not merge the pain and pleasure of each situation. Always choosing either pain or pleasure in our memories then judging from an incomplete picture. Our memories, when they are one-sided, keep us from experiencing each other as siblings and neighbors; the unbalanced perceptions create an internal division in the people we’ve become. Therefore, to become, we must love our stories and respect the experiences that brought us here, and become considerate of the courage required to bring us here.
“People find it very difficult to act on what they know. To act is to be committed, and to be committed is to be in danger.”― James Baldwin
There is much beauty in every moment of life, and even the heaviness of loneliness contains a special beauty. It is our loneliness, our special abode that contains the potential for our transformation. This aloneness is not easy to bear and cannot be romanticized; it must be confronted, embraced and utilized to become the person that the universe intended. Never exchange your loneliness for a company that doesn’t deserve you, and never sacrifice it for conformity. We have an obligation to the artists, and thought leaders before us to carve a path of self-determined righteousness. We must learn to attain a place of inner solitude so great only the beat of our heart guides our directions. We must follow our dreams for the sanity of the world, and live with the difficulty and loveliness of discovering ourselves everyday. We must only focus on remembering everyday our purpose for living, and not explain our position on this planet to no one. Assistance shall come because we are guided by what arises in us; until this comes we must take refuge in the beauty around us, and remember everyday our reason for being on the planet. We are here to love and deepen our crafts; this revelation cannot be rejected or overstated, but must direct us with every decision. Be patient and without resentment, we are becoming everything we seek. Let us bring forth our dreams through the dedication that is meant for our spirits.
“The poet’s inspiration is increased by success. Byron was an egoist; his longing for fame was petty. But the mere thought that through one’s inspiration there will one day lift itself from the dust to heaven’s heights some noble, beautiful human soul; the thought that those lines over which one has wept are consecrated as by a heavenly rite through one’s inspiration, and that over them the coming generations will weep in echo… that thought, I am convinced, has come to many a poet in the very moment of his highest creative rapture. But the shouting of the mob is empty and vain.” — Fyodor Dostoyevsky