The First Act
The Courage to Dream and Put Forth That Dream
There are 7 days in your average week. Coincidentally, there are also 7 acts of courage in the powerful book The 7 Acts of Courage by Robert E. Staub II.
Recently, I was given a copy of this book by somebody very important to me at my job. The book had her notes and writings and scribblings in it. But then, somebody came along who also proves very important to me as well. She came along and gave me a copy of this same book. Brand new, no creases or cracks in the spine or anything like that. Mmmm that new book smell 🙂
And so, as a result of getting this book on a Tuesday, I finished it by the following Saturday (yesterday), but managed to go through all 7 acts in real time on that Friday. It was a long day. It was also a very powerful day. All of these emotions and words streaming from this book into that part of myself that was always there, led me to start this series of posts all week long from The 7 Acts of Courage.
The First Act of courage is The Courage to Dream and Put Forth That Dream. Right now, I will start this series, by stating what this dream of The GSO Compassion Mission means to me and the dream that started this whole thing in motion.
My freshman year of high school, at least 13 years ago when I was 15 or 16 years old, I had that first dream. I remember it like it was yesterday. It started in one of those school cafeterias. Tile floors and fluorescent lights, long tables and teeny chairs. The works. But at that moment, it was just an anonymous girl and myself sitting in two folding chairs in a small section of about 15 empty folding chairs. She looked at me and asked me if I knew why we were there. I said no. There was an empty podium in front of these chairs. Then suddenly I was in a large circus tent. It was just me in a folding chair, the circus tent had about 30 folding chairs and it was kind of dark. There was still an empty podium at the front of the circus tent.
All of a sudden, an anonymous dark figure in a suit showed up at the no longer empty podium.
It asked me if I believed in God.
I said “Yes”.
Slowly, but surely, the empty folding chairs around me started to levitate and fly and spin around the room.
It asked me again if I believed in God.
I said “Yes”.
More of the chairs lifted and they spun faster and faster.
It asked me a third time if I believed in God…
The chairs were whipping through the circus tent. Flames were weaving in and out of the empty air pockets the chairs couldn’t reach. I was ducking down as the chairs were out of control. The figure at the podium was upset.
I yelled over the noise “Yes!”
And suddenly I was back in the cafeteria with the fluorescent lights humming, the empty folding chairs and the anonymous girl next to me. She turned to me and asked “Do you know why we’re here?”
I heard a voice, booming and echoing but soft say: “You are meant to speak to the world.”
And I woke up.
And I ignored that voice. I was a freshman in high school for goodness sake! I was just learning how to play the euphonium that would take me all the way through high school unscathed. The instrument that would get me into college. I was a sophomore in high school. I was moving cities and and towns with new additions to the family unit in tow. I was in a high school that had some people in it that brought back unpleasant memories from elementary school and I was pretty terrified. I was a junior in high school. I was making new friends and getting to know some of the areas of Raleigh, North Carolina. The movie theaters, the malls, the parks and the lakes. I was a senior in high school. I was at the highest point in band that I had aspired to be in and I was marking time, marching in a military outfit and laughing with people in my section. We were traveling to places like Dallas, Texas and Orlando, Florida in those years and selling poinsettias and boxed fruit, meeting in the mornings, having lunch in the band room in the afternoon, hanging out there after practice at the end of the day and memorizing sheet music at night. I was a high school graduate. There were portfolios for colleges to be made and my mother was whipping through old binders and sheet protectors to help me showcase my artistic and musical abilities the right way.
I was a college freshman. My entrepreneurial grandmother had passed away. My spiritual friend, who was a couple years older than I, had committed suicide while attending one of the states best universities. I was in a dorm with two girls who acted just alike and I didn’t really get along with either of them. I switched dorms, lost my roommate when she moved in with her best friend, and I started to grow into myself. As the years passed, I met new people, experienced many new things, graduated college, went back to college to work in film and do documentaries with a local music/band focus, finished my time with that and realized there was just something more that was missing.
Suddenly, on the other side of two degrees, I realized that I wasn’t on the right path. I mean, I love education, don’t get me wrong. I am a better person for going to college, for sure. I loved it. Never had many problems going to classes, didn’t need a whole lot of outside kicks in the pants in order to keep my grades at an acceptable level. But when I got writing assignments or did films in my own specialty, I knew the whole time that I was trying to do something bigger. The bigger projects I did went relatively unnoticed. I was wanting to do something deeper than that, and the work that I did was centered around very egoentric personalities.
As I started to try and dig deeper into my subjects of interest (who didn’t want to dig too awfully deep), I started to dig deeper into myself. I started on a path towards a masters in social work. I did more volunteering and started looking into hospice, the hospital, and children’s advocacy volunteerism. Even though I want to be able to get to a point in my life when I can volunteer with all of those groups and more, at that point in my life it just wasn’t happening. I was having paperwork and bureaucratic troubles getting into the masters programs. People wouldn’t hand in references on time to volunteer positions that hinged off of recommendations. Living situations weren’t right to put all of my time and heart into certain volunteer positions. It just wasn’t working. And so as those doors closed, I had to come to terms with another door that was opening.
And that was the door that opened up the part of my spirit that was ready. It was ready for what I was supposed to do. Build the GSO Compassion Mission. So, what will be two years ago this March, I took a step towards the First Act of Courage: The Courage to Dream and Put Forth That Dream. I started this blog and started some preliminary sketches towards what now has become this:
I think it’s safe to say that this has come a long way from being just a dream, but there are many more places to go.
the GSO Compassion Mission 