Signed in Blood, Sealed in Tears

I saw "Freedom Writers" today. It was an incredible movie. Like "Pursuit of Happyness" the movie sticks with you hours (and probably days) after the closing credits roll to a finish. My best friend (amythestmoon) and I ended up in the usual post movie discussion at a Japanese Resturaunt. The movie touched on many great themes: legacy, racism, the power of understanding, universal humanity, what respect really means, etc.

But for me the issue that stuck out the most was almost a side point to the film. It was about that moment in your life where you choose whether or not you are going to follow your dream. This seems trivial because it feels so obvious, especially when you are watching one of these "success story" movies, where people stick to their guns, take that leap of faith and come out on top. With only one chance at life, why would you choose to do anything other than follow your dreams?

But the truth is, it’s not obvious at that moment of decision. Before you beat the odds, it’s easy to believe you will be a part of that greater percent that fails. Faced with the possibility of failure, everything else seems more significant. Security. Comfort. The expectations of the world. The latest episode of Dateline. It’s easy to let your dreams erode to the point where they don’t seem that important anymore. You start telling people that you’ll get to it next week, when the stock market rises, when you buy that new refridgerator, or when you get that new job with the corner office. And eventually, you stop mentioning your dream at all. And you convince yourself you’re happy.

Just before that erosion process wears your dream to dust, there’s a critical moment where you make a decision. You stand in front of yourself and decide if you are going to follow your dream or let it go. Last year, just after I turned in my JET application, I found myself in front of the mirror in my mind, and I realized I was faced with that decision. Did I want to let my dream of being a writer go? Was one failed novel, and a year of fear paralysis enough to wear my dream away?

At that point, I wanted to let my dream go. It wasn’t doing anything for me except earning the disappointment and (at best) indifference of my family. I had a hard time looking people in the eye and telling them I was a writer, because I had done next to nothing with the craft for over a year. I could see my broken word to myself in the eyes of others. And I wanted to replace it with something. A better, more exciting, or at least socially acceptable aspiration.

But when I looked in the mirror in my mind, something inside me realized that if I let my dream go, it would break something important inside of me. I decided to give writing another go, to fill the time between January and when I left the country with the goal of improving my writing. I couldn’t let go of the dream until I felt like I had given it my best shot. So I signed up for a writing class and in the process of taking up the mantle of writing again, I found out how significant that dream was to me. It didn’t invalidate the other dreams I had discovered, my desire to travel, learn other languages and cultures. Each dream enhanced the other, but in my quest to use one dream to suppress the other, I was quietly leaching the life out of both.

When I made the decision to hold onto my dream, I didn’t know how that would effect path of my life. I didn’t realize I would cling to that dream through one of the roughest years of my life. And I really didn’t expect it to give me much in the way of success. I guess that’s why, right now, I’m flitting back and forth between delerious happiness with how well my life is going, and confusion on the same subject.

The moral of the story is obvious, in the words of Rick Springfield:

There is a path it’s always been yours
And you have the right of passage
Signed in blood and sealed in tears
Sending you a message
Across the miles and through the years
Stand up (and be there) and Hold On To Your Dream
With some faith and conviction.

But I wonder, for the people who let their dreams erode to nothing, maybe it’s because the dream wasn’t made of strong enough stuff. Maybe it wasn’t signed in blood, sealed in tears. There’s a part of you that needs to stand against the wall, face the mirror that is yourself and say in a ringing or shaking voice, "I’ll give it another go. I can’t let my dream disappear, will it away, because the cost of failure is less than the cost of not trying my best."