Monday, April 22, 2013

Following Your Dreams



Yesterday, Sunday 4/21, Kahu (Hawaiian for Reverend) Curt Kekuna and I co-officiated Rebekah and Carlos' wedding ceremony in Dorado, Puerto Rico. Here are the remarks I shared with them and their guests:

One of the things we take for granted in developed societies is the idea of following your dreams. Our ancestors for 99% of the existence of our species may have had dreams; we cannot interview them to find out. However, we may legitimately doubt that on the African Savannah, as they hunted and gathered every day, they could even think of following dreams like the ones we have today. Occasions like this one, of two individuals, deeply in love, consummating their dreams together remind us how blessed we are indeed, compared to our distant forebears.

Now, there is a downside to following your dreams. Some see the dream as a fixed destination that they need to reach within an allotted time. Kierkegaard said of this approach that wrong expectations are the key to unhappiness. Rebekah and Carlos in their stories as individuals and as a couple show us a different way.

Following your dreams means being willing to tune and reconfigure them regularly. Following your dreams means seeing them as a journey, not a destination. Following your dreams means seeing them as living and breathing, growing and changing. In essence, what Rebekah and Carlos are telling us is that following your dreams really means seeing them as an unfinished and ongoing love story.

It is a story that you don't fully understand till you reach the end of the story. And, as anyone who knows Rebekah and Carlos can tell you that is what makes their story visibly exciting, exhilarating and wonderful. So now, without further ado, let us help them begin the next chapter in their ongoing story.

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