I had this familiar dream last night. One where I’m on a roller coaster and it’s clacking to the top of the first hill, my knuckles are white from gripping the safety bar in front of me. I am beginning to hyperventilate from my inability to see the course ahead when I wake up panting. But not this time. This time as I was clacking to the top I could see the course that lay ahead. I looked down to see the onlookers, those too afraid to experience this life, those who would rather watch, those who before now stand in the place I would have preferred. But not this time. This time J.T.’s spirit has consumed me. His excitement for this life, always the first to try and the first to succeed, the one who encouraged and inspired. His zest for life apparently contagious because this time I sat in the front row, here in my new found freedom, with a head full of dreams, precious pieces of the past tucked safely in my pocket and my arms held up high. I will take the ride for the experience, for the opportunity to learn something, and for the example it sets. When the ride ends and I rush back to the entrance to do it again, this time I will grab the hands of the onlookers and encourage them to ride along.


If you lose hope, somehow you lose the vitality that keeps life moving, you lose that courage to be, that quality that helps you go on in spite of it all. And so today I still have a dream.
Martin Luther King, Jr.


It takes a lot of courage to release the familiar and seemingly secure, to embrace the new. But there is no real security in what is no longer meaningful. There is more security in the adventurous and exciting, for in movement there is life, and in change there is power.
Alan Cohen