Do you remember that moment when you knew what you wanted to be when you grew up?  Please enjoy today’s guest blogger, Anne Mercado, as she shares her story of following her dreams.

“There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in.” -Deepak Chopra

As adults we view childhood dreams in two ways. The first as an uncanny certainty of what a child wants despite her tender age. The second as a changing desire of an impulsive and creative young mind. For the latter, how many times have your children proclaimed their inner-most desire to become a spaceman, only to have this change the following week. What do they want to be now? The next Picasso. It’s for this very reason we initially dismiss childhood dreams as anchorless ships that sail off into the vast blue sea, never to return again.

But that’s not how it was for me.

I always knew I wanted to write. In fact, I was always writing (and reading) as a child. My younger self – during the time when I could barely spell “chicken” right – would pound away on a typewriter, basking under the sun. I wrote about nature-inspired poetry, fictional news reports and stories produced by a hyper-active imagination. I spent my after-school hours in the backyard taking in fresh air while observing chicken, dogs, grass, leaves, trees, and yes, even creepy-crawlers. These were often the subject of my writing. As I got older my intensity for writing grew with me. Pen and notebook in hand, my thoughts would materialize into words etched into white pages. I wrote more poetry, fictional news reports and stories about scientists using the moon’s magnetic field to hurl missiles at approaching meteors. There was even once when a magazine published my writing.

You’d think that with such a desire for it, I would end up just as I had always wanted to be.

Wrong. I was advised against pursuing my dream and chose a career path that had little to do with writing anything creative, unless you consider reports and contracts as page-turners. Fortunately or unfortunately, depending how you view it, I couldn’t seem to find fulfillment from the jobs I had. In retrospect, it was because what I really wanted was to churn out words. I wasted 6 years of my life, excluding college. 6 years I could have spent honing my skills as a writer. But hey, now I’m back writing. Starting from scratch, which by the way is wrought with challenges. A bumpy road indeed, but what path isn’t? If there’s anyone who claims to have had a silky-smooth road to their dreams, they deserve to be ostracized from the rest of humanity for risk of spreading false hope.

Now for the takeaway.

“The things which the child loves remain in the domain of the heart until old age.” – Kahlil Gibran

Once my child told me he wanted to be a chef. Fine with me. Now he wants to be a lawyer. Nothing wrong there except I’d rather have him pursue another career (the reasons are my own and irrelevant to this post). I was thinking about our conversations and realized that my objections shouldn’t prevent him from following what he wants. It’s not my life to live after all, but his. And if defending those in need makes him fulfilled, who am I to prevent him from that? Now that we have children of our own, let’s not be so quick to smirk at their childhood dreams. These aspirations should be taken seriously and nurtured because those who love what they do often excel. Why? Because one of the best things about being human is the feeling of fulfillment and purpose that comes from passion. Passion is an endless supply of fuel, one of the greatest motivators there are. So for my child who has recently turned 5, my promise is to help him lock-down the sometimes elusive childhood dream and help him reel it in. That way, he never has to “work” a day in his life because he’ll be doing what he loves, whatever that is. As long as it’s legal, of course.

Photo Credit: Creative Common from Linda Cronin

Anne Mercado is the quirky author behind Green Eggs & Moms, which offers clever parenting tips and news to keep moms with young kids sane. When she’s not hunched over the computer working, you can find her either counting down to ten to get her kiddo to move faster, or reading a horror book. She also loves vampires and zombies.

Jennifer Wolfe

Jennifer Wolfe, a writer-teacher-mom, is dedicated to finding the extraordinary in the ordinary moments of life by thinking deeply, loving fiercely, and teaching audaciously. Jennifer is a Google Certified Educator, Hyperdoc fanatic, and a voracious reader. Read her stories on her blog, mamawolfe, and grab free copies of her teaching and parenting resources.

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Sometimes we all are so caught up in how we want things to be. Who will win an election, who will find the right relationship, what college our kids will be accepted to, what treatment will be found for an illness, what job might open up for us. We face these all-important, and sometimes critical, issues in life. However, I wonder if perhaps we are all just trying a bit too hard to make it happen.

I will admit I am a cerebral person. I stay up in my head all the time. I like it there. I like to think, to ponder, to imagine what if. I have never been one to jump into huge risks, or vocalize my thoughts immediately as they come to mind. I keep them ‘up there’.

Interestingly, I also wear them on my sleeve. Emotional, shy, sensitive – all adjectives used to describe me my entire life. It’s hard to feel intensely and try to keep it inside. I’ve never been good at lying or keeping secrets. Mix that all together, and I often find myself missing opportunities, misunderstood, or thinking of what I ‘should have said’ 30 minutes after the occasion ended.

So in the last few years I have kind of surprised myself. Surprised my family and my colleagues, too. I’ve decided that I needed to let these feelings and thoughts out of my head and heart and put them in motion. Like a slow leak in a balloon, I let the control in my head move towards my center. Using my contemplative nature, instead of thinking it out I let it settle and sink in. I acted on intuition over intellect and to my great surprise, amazing things started to happen.

I found myself in the mountains of Nicaragua, along with my children and complete strangers, mucking in the dirt and rocks to build a school. I found myself teaching and coordinating a new program at my school to help kids and families find their confidence and success. I found myself on a zip line flying over the jungle to challenge my fear of heights. I found myself applying and earning a government grant to study global education, with plane tickets for Washington D.C. and Indonesia. I found myself writing, testing the voice that began to emerge and finding new writing friends to share and learn with. Now, I find myself writing for Yahoo, my thoughts and words about education and parenting shared with an unlimited audience.

None of these experiences would have happened if I remained locked inside my head. There are too many reasons I could create to explain them away. There are too many risks, too many challenges, too many other people who would be better suited. Except that, the universe is taking care of me.

My writing friend Brenda Moguez, who shares her head and heart with the universe on a regular basis, writes in her blog ‘Passionate Pursuits’, “just once, this singular time, I’d like a leg up, the map, the golden key, the spoonful of sugar, the ruby slippers, and one of the wishes Genie gave to Aladdin. It’s ballsy of me to ask, I know, but I have good reason. I looked at karma’s life ledgers and I am showing a substantial overpayment. The same auditors, who tally the votes for the Academy Awards, keep karma’s book, so the numbers are accurate. Trust me.”

I couldn’t agree more. Karma’s life ledgers do keep the tally marks next to our name. Santa Claus does know who has been naughty and who has been nice. Cinderella’s fairy godmother does turn a pumpkin into a carriage so she can meet her handsome prince. And the Blue Fairy does bring Pinocchio back to life after he proves his bravery, honesty and selflessness.

But all of those magical experiences would remain in the ledger book if not for one thing: the voice and actions that put them out into the universe to be answered. As the great philosopher Bill Cosby says, “In order to succeed, your desire for success should be greater than your fear of failure.”

Is this what holds so many of us back?  It’s our lives; we have to want it to happen.

That, and a bit of fairy dust.

Jennifer Wolfe

Jennifer Wolfe, a writer-teacher-mom, is dedicated to finding the extraordinary in the ordinary moments of life by thinking deeply, loving fiercely, and teaching audaciously. Jennifer is a Google Certified Educator, Hyperdoc fanatic, and a voracious reader. Read her stories on her blog, mamawolfe, and grab free copies of her teaching and parenting resources.

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Where I went to high school

The 25 mile commute each day from the bubble of a community I grew up in took me from a place where crime wasn’t something we worried about. We hardly ever locked our doors, and if we broke curfew (or any other teenage rule) someone always saw us and informed our parents.  We knew everyone at school, and there was no escaping a reputation that siblings had left behind.  We went to school from kindergarten through graduation among children we played in sandboxes with-some might have called it utopia.  Until one day…

May 4, 1983:

Thong Hy Huynh was a new kid in town.  His family had recently immigrated from Vietnam, hoping for a better life. He was quiet-in fact, so quiet that I never even met him. I never knew his name until the day he was killed on campus.

On that day, life in our idyllic little town changed forever.  One minute we were walking to Home Ec during our senior year, preparing for another period of delightful cooking instruction.  The next minute, total chaos erupted just around the corner from our classroom.  People were screaming and a huge crowd hovered near the art room.  For a moment I thought it must be just another fight-not that fighting was an everyday occurrence.  But the teacher’s grave expressions and composed panic told me this was more-much more.

Thong was different.  He didn’t speak English fluently, and had seen horrors in his native country we can only imagine.  At that moment on May 4, he was defending a friend who was being tormented by a red haired, light skinned bully.  Words were exchanged, and before anyone knew it Thong was down, stabbed and bleeding to death.

Eight years after his death, I remember what I felt when I began teaching in my new community.  I felt different.  I was out of my comfort zone.  I felt scared and insecure.  But after a few weeks, I felt myself relaxing. I felt the love and trust of my students and their parents as they realized my care was genuine, and my passion for teaching began to override my fears of being ‘different’.

I don’t think it was until then, years after Thong died, that I really realized what Maya Angelou was saying.  And now, when my daughter walks past his memorial plaque at the high school I hope she understands.  Actually, I know she understands.  Because what I learned from Thong and my students is a part of me, and the message flows from my heart and actions into my children at home and at school.  We ARE more alike than we know, and being different is what makes life such a beautiful experience.

Jennifer Wolfe

Jennifer Wolfe, a writer-teacher-mom, is dedicated to finding the extraordinary in the ordinary moments of life by thinking deeply, loving fiercely, and teaching audaciously. Jennifer is a Google Certified Educator, Hyperdoc fanatic, and a voracious reader. Read her stories on her blog, mamawolfe, and grab free copies of her teaching and parenting resources.

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