Star Wishing

RA-RA LAKE, JUMLA NEPAL

“The flower that blooms in adversity is the rarest and most beautiful of all.” —Walt Disney Company, Mulan 

The Power of a Dream

On September 18, 2007, Randy Pausch, a Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University, gave a compelling presentation, The Last Lecture: Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams. Randy had been diagnosed with terminal cancer and had less than a year to live. His one-hour speech was a YouTube sensation, leading to interviews, talk-show appearances, and a New York Times best seller, The Last Lecture. Randy beautifully articulated a legacy and planted it in the hearts of millions around the world. His lecture wasn’t really about achieving your dreams; it was about living your life. It’s worth an hour of your time. Here’s the link . . . The Last Lecture

The Power of a Hope

Walt Disney built an empire on the power of childlike imagination. When You Wish Upon a Star is ranked number seven by the American Film Institute in their 100 Greatest Songs in Film History. When Jiminy Cricket croons that chorus, even the most jaded adult gets a little misty-eyed. There is something resonant there—no matter who we are, dreams can come true. 

The Power of a Seed

On the island of Svalbard, 810 miles from the North Pole, the Norwegians built a doomsday seed vault. It is designed to preserve an emergency supply of seed in the event of a global catastrophe. There are several seed banks around the world. The largest is the Millennium Seed Bank Project in West Sussex, England, which was built as an insurance policy against plant and fungi extinction.

In February 2012, a National Geographic article reported on a 32,000-year-old seed’s germination. An Ice Age squirrel forgot­—or was unable to recover—his stash near the Kolyma River in Siberia. The seeds, which were locked in permafrost, had been damaged and could not self-germinate. Scientists were able, though, to extract viable plant embryo from some of the immature seed and germinate a 32,000-year-old perennial.

The oldest mature seed ever germinated was a 2,000-year-old Judean date palm found while excavating Herod the Great’s palace ruins in Masada, Israel. By March 2012, it was a 2.5-meter flowering sapling. 

Dying to Dreams

A seed has an amazing capacity to regenerate. Within that dry, hardened shell lies a dormant embryo that reproduces and adapts through the generations to the environment. It’s the stuff of life. But to give life, the seed has to die. 

The Resurrected Dream

Dreams are like that. They germinate within our eager hearts and bud into hope-filled blooms. Those blooms often wither in life’s toil and bury their seed in our disappointment. And on some promising spring, sometimes decades later, they flower in startling profusion. 

There is a time to dream, and there is a time to die to dreams. There is a time to mourn their passing, and there is a time to renew them once again. Dreams never die; sometimes, they lay dormant through long, and dark, and weary winters.

Every First Time

UPPER KARNALI RIVER VALLEY, NEPAL

Some dark night, not that far away from now, you will awaken in the early hours. You'll lie in wait for the reluctant dawn, unable to sleep. It’ll be the restless legs, or maybe the medication, or the hip replacement, the arthritic joint, the stiff back, something like that. Or maybe it’ll just be the habit of the aged, early to bed and all that. 

As you lie there in that lonely dark, you might remember one of your firsts. The elderly do that, you know. They relive their firsts when the end is near. They remember their firsts because of their magic.

Maybe you will remember that first kiss—the flush, the peculiar vivid press of timid lips, that rush of careless adolescence, like skinny dipping in dark, cold waters under starlight.

You’ll remember it because it was a first. A time when you felt something ancient and wistful. You never forget a first. You never forget what it teaches you. And somehow you know that there are more firsts to come when you are ready. Even the dying are virgins in some ways.

There is a certain wisdom in a virgin’s smile. Though she does not know she knows. And she presses forward, eager but afraid.