Crossing Over
This month has been freakishly busy. I haven't had a single weekend where I had nothing to do or-for that matter-an ounce of free time. My birthday was on the 5th, the first weekend of the month. But for those of you know read my other blogs, you'll know that I spent that weekend driving to Atlanta for some silly wedding endeavor my cousin was participating in, wherein she married some guy she knew for all of two weeks. Wow. I'm glad that's over.
Last weekend I drove down to Winter Park to audition for some films at Full Sail. I have no freaking clue why I bother anymore, though. I'm about five times better than the actors I've seen them cast (I have one of their DVDs) and yet they never cast me. I drive frickin' four hours for a handfull of auditions, give it my all and they give me the shaft. I'm this close to saying "Screw 'em" and moving on to UCF. Might be less emo-angst projects over there anyway.
This weekend I finally get to celebrate my birthday. Planning a big party which has hogged my current week. And then next weekend is ProScout, a massive convention where a couple hundred actors and models gather in front of about fifty or so agiencies. It's a hectic few weeks but it's worth it. Unfortunately it means that my blogs (and my show, even) have been neglected.
That and I got this Xbox for my birthday. Man, I feel my soul is about seven pounds lighter.
I've also been caring for my ailing cat, who's getting really old. I mean, there's just a lot on my plate right now, so hopefully when March is all over I can get back into the full swing of things.
At our church, we were watching a Lisa Bevere video, Kised the Girls and Made Them Cry or something to that effect. It's a series of lessons on abstinence and the teachings are really solid. It clearly made an impact on my class (I teach the youth group on Wednesday nights) and so we've have many a fantastic discussion and I feel we're really reaching them, which is good because there are a lot of girls in my class-very young girls-who have gone down that road of sexual promiscuity and it's really sad.
But this isn't about that.
In the first lesson, Lisa spoke about how it's important to not emphasize on the dangers of sexual promiscuity so much as the beauty of the prize at the end if you wait. I'm oversimplifying to an enth degree to get to the crux point, so bear with me.
What she said was that children needed more than warnings. "They need a dream."
It kind of hit me really hard because I suddenly realized just how important dreams are to us, not just children. If you are a Christian, imagine your faith without the dream of heaven, or God or the glory of his coming. It'd be pretty glum and I can't think of why anyone would ever want to follow a belief structure like that. Christianity has a faith, a hope and a dream of the final coming of God in all of his majestic wonder on white horses and recreating the world in his image and we all live for eternity with him and there won't be a single tear shed afterwards.
To go down to a more Earthly level, imagine life without success. And in that, I mean any measure of success. Imagine going to school without the future of a diploma or the diploma ammounting to anything. Imagine a corporate ladder without any steps to climb. A date with a beautiful girl and you know nothing's going to come of it. Nothing has value.
It kind of pains me to even think about it.
The thing is, everybody needs a dream. Everybody needs it. People who have no dreams often find themselves in dark and lonely places or suicide. I'm not trying to exagerate an issue, I'm being serious. I think God created us this way, to dream, to need to dream so we would never be happy with just being.
So why am saying this? Because there seems to be this large opposition to the promotion of a dream in the business. People say it's overhyped. It's all about the dream. "Get real." "Wake up." "Life has no dreams, only degrees of labor."
I think Life is a dream. As a matter of fact, I know it is. It was a dream manifested by God and it is a perfect dream. We are God's dream. And just as we were created in the image of God, just as we are his dream, so do we need to dream.
Am I saying that we should dream of money? No.
But we should dream of success.
Benjamin Franklin had a dream. Our founding fathers had a dream. Martin Luther King had a dream. Neither of these were of holy stature, yet we don't attack them.
People are wanting to help people. These people in the business, are there to help others. And their dream is to become successful in this business. So what if you don't like it? It's their dream, and in order for them to continue their persuit-just like anyone else-they need that dream.
What are you dreaming?
