January 16, 2008

DREAMIN'

People are talking. So, what's with the grocery store, they ask. Standing in the checkout line last night, I had time to look around at the other customers as well as the employees. Once again, old rock playing over the sound system and slightly louder than I recall other stores playing it. The common denominator between customers and workers seemed to be the smiles and the jaunty attitude as they cruised around the aisles - or I am the only one who noticed it? Tonite, I think I'll check out another grocery store and see what their music is like. Actually, while standing in the lineup last night, I began day dreaming about the possibility of the store adding a latte bar in one corner, perhaps a customer-use kitchen with counter and stools in the other and would it be too much to ask them to lower the lights, add a disco ball at the entrance....

When I was a young lad, someone very important in my life, accused me of being a dreamer. It wasn't meant as a compliment. It came with the advice to straighten up and fly right, put your nose to the grindstone, work hard and make something of yourself! Now, I didn't take advice then, any better than I do now. The whole idea of dreaming as a virtue may have been the typical teenage reaction to authoratative instruction, but all of a sudden I began to notice how many people were dreaming. Everyone from the Everley Brothers to Martin Luther King had a dream. We dreamed about everything from unfulfilled love to changing the world. Somebody has to be a planner and an organiser, someone has to lay out on paper how we move from one objective to the next. Blessings to the accountants, researchers and engineers, but long before any of that can happen, somebody has to dream, somebody has to hold the vision for what is possible. I'm always amazed at how many people are tremendously successful, especially in business, with nothing more than a dream in their briefcase. We all know examples of the high school dropouts who went on to found hugely successful business empires and who now employs all the accountants, engineers and MBA's. Totally lacking a business plan, the dream was so strong and the vision shone so brightly that despite naysayers and conventional wisdom, the dream had no choice but to become reality.

The size of the dream is only limited by the size of the dreamer.

Here's to the dreamers of this world, it is a better place for your being here.

Now, if I could just find that old, white, polyester suit, head back to the grocery store.......Get down tonight!

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