Dreamworks
January 25, 2012
William Butler Yeats wrote, “In dreams begin responsibility.” And while this may not at all be what the Irish author had in mind, here’s what this line has meant to me.
When you dream for something, you hope for it; and there is little hope of that dream coming true unless you take personal responsibility for it. Until you begin to work for it, there’s no hope for it.
Jesse Owens said: “We all have dreams. But in order to make dreams come into reality, it takes an awful lot of determination, dedication, self-discipline and effort.”
In other words, dreams take work. Be that Martin Luther King’s dream for peaceful relations between people and nations, or the comparatively modest dreams we have for schools and school sports. Dreams take work.
Sounds of Silence
April 12, 2015
I write in the early morning hours for the same reason birds sing then – it’s quiet. Birds can hear their voices, and I can hear my thoughts.
It is during the uncontested moments of the day that I can try out ideas – test them on paper. Yes, on paper! My most creative and productive process still employs a legal pad, a pencil and an eraser. The physical process of writing the words, looking at them, and often erasing what doesn’t make sense to my mind or sound right to my ear as I read it aloud.
The task of written communication has become more difficult during the four decades I’ve been engaged in this enterprise. While the work has become more complex and requires more nuanced discussion, the space available for careful comment has been reduced. Pretending cleverness or profundity, texts and tweets often do more harm than good to promote creative and productive discourse.
I am rarely provided the luxury of long-form journalism in this modern age. Even a “feature” article in a prestigious national professional journal is expected to be less than 1,500 words.
Modern scribes must boil down complicated matters to brief blogs like this one, hoping in a few short paragraphs to share an insight worth reading and to suggest a response worth doing.
The insight here? Silence is golden.
The suggested response? Seek a solitary space to describe and defend what it is that you hear in that silence.