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Bigger Picture, Movie Trash, Aligning Reality with Dreams

Hi, this is my first post for the year 2010. Happy new year wishes to all of you! As the year end approaches we all make new year resolutions. We decide to get rid of our vices in the new year. We all wish something good will happen to us in the new year. We believe we'll be better off than we currently are. But unfortunately new year is a moment when the date changes to a different year of the millennium. Sounds pretty depressing?

For the new year I wish to share something with you. I got a chance to talk with my friend last year. We talked about our college days and how innocent we were about the realities at that time. We shared how our dreams have changed or have taken a backseat. Of course we are more mature than we were years ago. But have we lost the ability to dream? We have become so accustomed to living in the present that we are missing out on whole lot of dreams of the future. Leaders/visionaries always talk about the bigger picture and how we should always look for it. But are we looking at the bigger picture of ourselves? For a moment step out of your body and watch yourself as just another man or another woman. Watch yourself get out of bed in the morning, reading a newspaper, leaving for office, doing your work, talking to colleagues, having lunch, discussing sports or politics, criticizing your boss, hating a beggar, sulking about work, worrying about money, cursing the rich, getting back home, giving a fake smile to the neighbor or wife and finally sleeping with all your worries to wake up next morning! We'll have to agree that this is life and there is not much we can do about it. But the bigger picture is we have the power to change ourselves. However miserable our current situation is we always have the power to get out of it. The fuel behind our power to change are our dreams. Some may call it hope but aren't we hoping for better conditions. So we have already visualized our "would be" and visualization is first step towards a dream.

Recently I watched an interview of Kevin Costner on Inside an Actors' Studio (although on Youtube). He gave a very valuable lesson not only for actors but for any person following his or her heart or guts. He talks about his job as a stage manager which paid not too much but the happiness he found in being close to his dream of being in theater or movie. He further adds about not worrying to take out even trash because inside his heart he knew it was movie trash! So he was closer to where he wanted to be. This is a valuable lesson for any person. We all have two emotions; "I am" and "I want". The closer we can align our "I am" to our "I want" the happier and satisfied we would be. But unfortunately we don't always are able to align these two. But we can always work on bringing these two closer. The more we work the better are our changes of aligning them and achieving our dreams. All efforts count however small they may be. Think of it as two huge stones which are far apart. We know a single push is not a possibility so we have to keep making small moves. And hope someday the distance between "I am" and "I want" would be small enough for a slight push for our happiness.

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