PATHFINDER FOUND
Thursday Aug. 28, 2014
We can and do.
All of us make differences in lives of others. That starts with making differences in our own. Reminders are set down in history, often wrapped in mystery … but most often as simple as recalling one little thing we changed yesterday, one little thing we made happen, one little gesture that made things better.
Sure, it’s a day-dream.
Sure things are difficult.
Sure, things seem impossible – and the path is loaded with barriers that seem impossible to break through.
I have a dream. Many.
We all have dreams. I’m not talking night-time dreams, fantasies or nightmares – but real dreams, day-time kind, of how the world might be, and how we might be within it.
I had some thoughts last night, jotted them down for this column.
But something more important landed in my mind – when something I read this morning jolted my memory.
Fifty-one years ago today Marin Luther King Jr. delivered his ‘I have a dream’ speech. I watched it on live television – no colour, just black and white. How apropos.
I’ve watched film of it many times. I watched it again early this morning. Seventeen minutes, twenty-eight seconds – time well invested, over, and over.
I was wondering, whether that cameraman, that soundman, those standing near him, that crowd of hundreds of thousands – if those people who had no idea what they would hear, no idea they would have their minds altered that day, if they new and felt they were observing something so powerful, lasting and game changing in one man’s life, one man’s dream – and that of an entire people, culture and country.
Did they know they were in the presence of greatness, of a great moment in history, or just hearing a story about one man’s dream without regard to whether it would lead to anything?
Recent news underscores how profoundly things have changed since that day, and how profoundly things have not.
Charting new directions, blazing new paths, is not a one-man behind a lecturn, not a crowd thing and not a societal wave of change or discontent.
New directions are more personal than that, aren’t they?
I’ve been talking a lot, and exploring a lot, about path lately. Yes, PATH, not PLATH. Lightness, not darkness. Joy, not pain.
Power within all of us needs to be unlocked.
I’ve got the key.
I’ve opened my door.
Can I stay on my path?
The barriers we run into – the ones I do – most often prove to be imaginary. I broke through one the other day, and like so many I’ve encountered, I immediately realized it was never really a barrier at all, except in my mind. Not to say all barriers are between our ears, individual or breakable.
My dreams are small, not collective. My dreams are ones I can taste, not waste. My dreams are step by step change. My dreams are not grand schemes of changing societies, laws or thinking of the masses My dreams are dreams of me, not thee. My dreams are realized in my mind first, then I get to make them happen.
What are your dreams doing?
Are you inspiring others, inspiring yourself or simply perspiring on hot summer days wishing things were different?
Have a wonderful day – and dream with your eyes wide open.
Mark Kolke
column written/ published from Calgary
morning walk: 11C/52F, innocent looking sky, mix of clouds and bare patches – until I looked west to see some very nasty looking stuff on the way. As we walked by the car lot this morning ‘my pathfinder’ as not there – gone and I wondered if Gusta noticed that I didn’t stop, didn’t hesitate, as we walked by the vacant spot in the lineup (because it’s parked in my stall at home).
