The importance of living your dreams.
I was wandering the boardwalk with my granddaughter last Saturday along the Kenai River in Soldotna, Alaska when we came upon a wood bench with a quote burned across the top slat — “I have lived my dream.” Ted Forsi
One of those moments when burnt words burn into the mind. How many are able to say this at life's end. Will I?
Out of curiosity I looked up this man — who died at seventy-one in 2016. He made his way from his native Michigan to become a civil engineer and hunting and fishing guide on Alaska's Kenai Peninsula. His memorial write-up says, “The family asks in Ted's honor that you might take a child hunting, fishing, or camping this year.”
Obviously Ted's dream was the great outdoors — and that led him to Alaska. It was Terry's dream, also. So, we packed up our four young kids and the dog in our squeamish green Ford station wagon and made it happen.
We left a neighborhood in the suburbs of Spokane for a mobile home in the woods at what seemed the edge of nowhere. But what memories we made. What adventures we had. The family here in Kenai just watched a classic movie, “Time Machine.” If you've seen it you'll understand when I say we tossed our bowler hats — dared to attempt something extraordinary.
The Bible's book of Proverbs says, “Hope deferred makes the heart sick, But desire fulfilled is a tree of life.” How do those dream desires become fulfilled?
It takes determination to reach for them. I don't know how Ted got from Point A to Point B — but he didn't simply sit in Michigan reading books and watching documentaries about Alaska. He might have grown up hunting and fishing — wanted to lead others to that same joy. And do it somewhere a little more dramatic than Michigan.
Terry and I have zero inclination to return to Alaska other than visits with family and friends. We lived that dream for 14 years — and now the dream has drifted south to Idaho's Panhandle. Still, it's a part of our history we treasure.
“The dream” is its own ecosystem within each individual's heart — a place, a purpose, a person or persons. Mine has been to write. I wanted to be a mom. My mother, from the time she played a nurse in a second grade school play, dreamed of being one. She stayed the course, studied — and she did it.
Dreams and life can and do collide. Dreams have to adapt — or to wait. Fight to survive. Be exchanged for new ones. Would that good dreams could flourish for every person on the planet. That life could bring more than just survival.
Dreams are meant to both ground us and lift us, to gift us and grow us. To benefit ourselves and others. We are created to dream.
What a thing of magnificence to be able to say, “I have lived my dream.”