Live Your Dream Life with Passion and Purpose

An Honorable Mention! Hey everyone, not sure if you are familiar with the boutique publisher, Skirt!, which is dedicated to women and topics they care about.

After writing my heartfelt Independence Day email to you, I serendipitously ended up at the Skirt! site and noticed they were having an essay Freedom Challenge. I copied and pasted what I wrote for all of you, and just got an email saying that it earned an honorable mention.

Check out the other essays… the winner and runners up!

I haven’t entered an actual writing contest since Mr. Reed, my creative writing teacher in high school, threatened to fail me if I didn’t enter my short story in the TCU writing contest for high school students! Though I won first place, it has taken many years to actually believe that writing what I want to write can be a significant part of my life. Perhaps this is why that essay just flew right out of my heart. I believe I can live my own dream life now at a level that is so palpable it is hard to describe. With that belief, the prison door has opened and I’ve walked right on out!Whatever your dream…you can live it and know what it truly means to be free – mind, body and spirit!

Here’s my essay… in case you missed it in email.

To Be Truly Free, Let Freedom Ring!

The Stars and Stripes, American patriotism, Betsy Ross, the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence…all hold a dear place in my heart, and have for nearly four decades. The Fourth of July has always been one of my favorite holidays

I never was quite sure why before. But, now I believe I have an idea of what it is that makes me so indescribably happy when I think of this country and what it stands for.

I realize that in our country many of us have never gone without water, most of us take for granted that we can walk down the street without fear and certainly, we aren’t concerned about dying for speaking our truth. We have so much freedom; we are literally drowning in a gift we can barely recognize. Instead, many of us who have grown up in this amazing country have switched to another type of oppression: self-imposed oppression. In this, one can’t live freely because the constraints are self-directed and built within the chamber of the mind, written on the heart with fear, apathy and self-loathing.

For many years, I read about and studied immigrants who came to our country with their hearts open and their minds full of possibility of what America has to offer them. They do not know anything other than what the dream has told them is possible… You can create anything in the land of opportunity. There’s this place called America where anything is possible! You only have to be willing to work and you can have anything you dream of.

They board boats and airplanes by the millions to come to experience freedom and to be truly free. They come to enjoy freedom of creative power; the type of freedom Americans have been born into and are not even aware of because we are too busy building our own internal prisons!

These immigrants sacrificed everything they have ever known – comfort of family living nearby, money saved over a lifetime, a network of colleagues and friends – to experience the American Dream in the Land of Opportunity. They still believe in the dream America has to offer. Many create fortunes in record time as they are not handicapped by our Americanized handicapped thinking and built-in limitations. They literally walk into our country free in body, mind and spirit to create and be ANYTHING they dream of.

I have felt intimately connected to this country and its forefathers…men who were willing to die for freedom. My highest value is feeling free and feeling good. Freedom is so important to me that every moment that feels constrained feels like an eternity spent in prison. I cannot imagine the strength or conviction it took for Nelson Mandela to make peace with his incarceration. Freedom is a feeling, state of mind and knowing all wrapped up in the expansiveness of possibility.

Our country’s visionaries were willing to give their lives to what they believed was true. They were willing to take action on what they dreamed of for themselves, their families and future generations. I often imagine what it must have been like for them. There was NOTHING here waiting for them. They would come to this land with nothing but their dream in hand and a few supplies for the journey ahead. Just like immigrants today. What appeared to be nothing was a land full of everything they would ever need for their dream. And, so much more than they could have ever imagined when they first set forth with only a vision in hand.

‘What must that have been like? What were they thinking as they dove into the unknown,’ I have wondered since I was a little girl. In the past, I often focused on how hard it must have been. I would think, ‘Oh, I’m so lucky to be here in my lifetime.’ I’ve been grateful for their vision and our country, and yet I thought, ‘Oh, I could never have done what they did. How courageous they were!’

Today, with a newfound sense of freedom in my heart that has come with my own visionary dream, I imagine that they were excited. I imagine that they weren’t focusing on the hard work. I have the sense that they enjoyed the journey of following their dream – no matter where the journey took them. Today, I KNOW they were ALIVE in every part of their beings with a dream that was ablaze in their hearts. Just like immigrants today. Just like I am today.

Freedom is a gift that rings from within first, and flows out into the world to others who want to believe it exists, too. It is the sound a heart makes when it is in tune with the bell bearer’s dream. Some of us can’t hear the bell ring anymore, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t ring for those who have already responded to its call. Our forefathers rang a bell 234 years ago that can still be heard around the world in the hearts of immigrants who want to believe anything is possible.

To be truly free, our hearts, minds and bodies must move and love as one. That’s when we can hear the call of our heart, which delivers us peacefully to the freedom that has always been there waiting for us.