Keeping Dreams Alive: What advice is the child you were sending you today?
“Far away there in the sunshine are my highest aspirations. I may not reach them, but I can look up and see their beauty, believe in them, and try to follow where they lead.”
~Louisa May Alcott
Today, I am thinking about words I have lived by for decades. Louisa May Alcott’s advice became important to me as I was entering my teaching years.
What were your dreams? The middle of 2025 is only one month away. Lately, my imagination is filled with pages from history: the Boston Tea Party, Patrick Henry’s emotion filled speech, the wisdom of Abe Lincoln, The Emancipation Proclamation, The Civil Rights Act and so much more. Our limits are being tested and yet, I want to cultivate and follow my original dreams!
How are you keeping your original life goals alive? When I was four, I wanted to be a housewife, a teacher, and ballet dancer. Those vocations seemed compatible at the time. Unlike many children, my school experience was good.
I loved school!
I wrote and illustrated my own little textbooks and schedules. Art was always part of it!
By third grade. I sold customized greeting cards around the block. In fifth and sixth grades, I directed a neighborhood talent show and a carnival. Kids wanted something to do during the summer! I guess I was a natural director or just very bossy! What did your inner child desire?
I knew I wanted to teach and by the end of college, I moved where the job was…good fortune for me.
My passions included teaching everything I could about England and in our alternative school, I taught math, grammar, writing, art, home economics and sponsored the school magazine.
Decades later, I began to crave life after teaching. By then, our own children were college age. I wanted to paint. I eagerly dove in joining art associations, creating a life drawing group, directing an art gallery, and travel loomed on the horizon. I took the leap and fell head over heels with France!
The collage I created the summer I returned to France:
Visit my Etsy shop for artwork and stationery inspired by my travels: https://www.etsy.com/shop/ArtbyJanisCommentz
I have been extremely fortunate, but I encourage you to keep even a small spark of your original dreams alive. Through it all, what quotes kept you going? Who were role models?
Now that the world seems to bounce out of bounds, what priorities and passions are calling you? Meditate on the quotes you have lived by! And during this season of graduation, imagine yourself giving the graduation address. (I gave many.) What words of wisdom would you share? I challenge you!
I’d love to hear favorite quotes and advice from role models of your past. What dreams are you nurturing?
Inspired by all of you,
Janis