Christians in Cinema

Last week I picked up a great book from my local library. The book is “The Dream Manager,” by Matthew Kelly.

He wrote the book for companies who want to encourage more loyalty in their employees, but the principles  he discusses can just as easily apply to our personal lives. Many people reach a point where they’re content in their job, they have a good family, a home, a car they like, and are pretty settled.

Yet underneath it all often lies a quiet restlessness, a yearning and longing for something more.

One of the first exercises Kelly suggests is to make a list of 100 dreams. Do you know that’s kind of challenging? I decided to go to lunch one Saturday afternoon (before seeing “Kung Fu Panda”) and start my dream list.

I got to 30 pretty easily. It took some thinking to get to 50. I think I had about 63 or so when I left for the theater, but getting there was challenging.

As I thought about my list, I saw a couple of patterns. One was that a lot of my dreams had to do with experiencing travel and adventure to foreign lands and encountering new cultures. Others had a lot to do with exploring creative expression: music, art, writing, etc.

Just the act of listing my dreams was somewhat cathartic. But it’s not enough to write them out. I have to do something with them. I need to make steps toward seeing those dreams come true. Some will require finances, others time away from work, some take just the simple act of signing up for a class at a community college.

Most of today’s top filmmakers are great dreamers. They had a dream to pursue and went for it. They let nothing get in their way.

What are your dreams? What have you put away on a shelf and forgotten, or just let them be covered up by bills, notes to answer, books to read, etc.? What are you doing about them? How are you pursuing your dreams, and if you aren’t, what’s stopping you?