Keep your dreams flying

What keeps a dream in the air?

First, know what you want. The most useful self-help books emphasize that you can't help yourself find your dreams if you're fuzzy about what those dreams are. The best of them give you a little exercise to help you figure it out. The ones I've written about, Do It! Let's Get Off Our Buts by Peter McWilliams and How to Kill the Job Culture Before It Kills You by Claire Wolfe, both have good goal-finding exercises.

But in this society afflicted with mass attention deficit disorder, with so many distractions it's almost impossible to focus like a laser on anything for more than a few minutes, do you know what keeps a dream in the air?

Mal: Well, I suppose you do, since you already know what I'm about to say.

River: I do. But I like to hear you say it.

Mal: Love. You can learn all the math in the 'verse, but you don't take a boat in the air you don't love, she'll shake you off just as sure as the turning of worlds. Love keeps her in the air when she ought to fall down, tells you she's hurting 'fore she keens. Makes her a home.

OK, there I go again into a Firefly/Serenity reference. But Joss Whedon gets to the heart of it, and so do McWilliams and Wolfe who emphasize, as Wolfe says: "Love what you do. Do it with passion."

Will Rogers said it, too: "To be successful, you must know what you're doing, you must love what you're doing, and you must believe in what you're doing."

In an interview somewhere, I've heard Whedon say he doesn't want to create stuff that people like, he wants to create stuff that people love. Since he knows what he wants to accomplish, no wonder his best stuff has such a following: He had a goal, and he accomplished it. But more important, love was at the heart of it.

Know what you want to do. Love what you do. Do it with passion. Love keeps a dream in the air. Find out what you love, and you've started the journey towards your dream. Love will keep you flying when you ought to fall down.