I've been going around the house whistling and humming all evening - mostly tunes from South Pacific, because I'll be playing keyboards for the show when it goes up at Franklin High School later on this month. The songs from this show are all familiar, and catchy - the kind that lodge in your inner ear and keep repeating in your mind like a computer on endless loop. But Rodgers and Hammerstein's composing skills aren't the main reason I've been singing around the house tonight.
Mostly, it's because I'm happy.
I'm happy because I got to spend some time pursuing my dream this afternoon. Well, one of them, anyway. They one that let's me play the piano and make music with other people.
Its not really a big dream, at least not anymore. Oh, I suppose I might once have harbored fairy tale like visions of walking onto the world's famous stages and pounding away at Beethoven's Emperor concerto on a nine foot Bosendörfer grand. Nowadays, I'm satisfied to sit down for a few hours at my own beloved Kimball and play away. I'm even happier if I have something to work toward - like a choral competition to accompany, or a musical performance. This month I have both, an embarrassment of riches for someone who has curtailed her musical '"gigs" in favor of more hours behind the other keyboard (the computer!) in her office. The one that actually earns real money.
I've come to the conclusion that dreams don't necessarily need to be huge to be satisfying. If you become fixated on some magnificent big dream, you might miss out on the opportunity to savor a very rewarding portion of it in real life. Chances are, I'll never play a nine foot Bosendorfer on the stage at Carnegie Hall. But I can still sink my ten fingers into the sweet resistance of 88 ivories, still hear the melody and harmony that issues forth, still race up and down the keyboard with reckless abandon.
So I'm living the dream after all.
How about you? Are you living any of your dreams, in a big or small way?
~ for Sunday Scribblings