Little boys’ dreams often become the lives of grown (adult) men. When I use the word “dreams,” I’m not talking about those images and sounds that come to us while we’re sleeping. Rather (instead), I’m talking about the hopes and desires that grow from our imagination, often when we’re young–sometimes very young. These dreams can give us the courage, strength, and determination to pursue (go after; work toward) goals and ideas that others would never consider (think about doing).
I was reminded of these dreams by two videos that I came across (found) recently. The first video is of a three-year-old conductor. A conductor is the leader of an orchestra (a group of musicians playing instruments). This three-year-old boy is not conducting a real orchestra, but he is using his imagination to do what a conductor does, while he listens to a CD of one of Beethoven’s symphonies (a longer piece of music played by a full orchestra). And he does it quite well – for the first 2 or 3 minutes! I don’t know if he’s really dreaming of becoming a conductor some day; however, this may be where the dream begins.
You can see the video here, on Open Culture, along with the same piece of music conducted by the great Herbert von Karajan.
I identify with this dream because I had the same dream. I didn’t start when I was three, but when I was a few years older, I spent hours “conducting” Beethoven’s symphonies – all nine of them – in my parents’ dining room where the stereo was. Part of that dream came true. Today, as a hobby (something you do for pleasure), I am a member and assistant conductor of a choir (group of singers) that performs music written by many of the great composers (writers of music).
The second video comes from a Yahoo! Canada News story that tells about a seven-year-old boy whose dream took him to the edge (beginning) of space:
Most kids dream about becoming an astronaut (a person trained to travel into space) when they grow up, but one youngster (child) from New York just couldn’t wait for a glimpse (quick look; peek) of space.
Seven-year-old Max Geissbuhler and his father Luke came up with a solution (a way to solve a problem or do something): send a balloon equipped with an HD (high definition) video camera and iPhone into the stratosphere – 30 km above Earth’s surface.
Father and son packed their equipment into an insulated (protected from hot and cold) casing (container; box) and hitched (attached) it to a balloon. They even included hand warmers to help keep the equipment from freezing (for liquid to become so cold that it turns solid) and a handwritten note from Max to strangers who might discover the balloon.
The experiment was a resounding (very great; complete) success. The camera captured (recorded) amazing footage (video showing a particular event) of the blackness of space and the curvature (curve or roundness) of the Earth before the expanding (getting larger) balloon burst (exploded) – as expected – from lack (not enough) of atmospheric pressure (pressure or force from the weight of air). The team then located their device, protected by a parachute (a large piece of fabric that fills with air and allows a heavy object to fall slowly), by utilizing (using) the iPhone’s GPS (global positioning satellite) capability.
Despite not technically (officially) reaching space – the boundary (line that marks the edge of something) is usually defined as 100 km above Earth’s surface – the camera did get a peek (glimpse; quick look). Not bad for a seven year old.
You can see the video here – Homemade Spacecraft – on Vimeo.
Little boys’ – and little girls’ – dreams are important. They often provide the spark (action or event that makes something happen) they need to accomplish (do) great things. I’ve seen it happen.
I hope that you and your children dream dreams – and accomplish them!
~ Warren Ediger – creator of Successful English – where clear explanations and practical suggestions help dreams of better English come true.
Photo by W. Ediger
Hi Warren,
I got reminiscent. Good old days, all the childhood wishfull dreams came rushing back to me.
Your post took me back when I was a little child.back then my only dream was to become a famous actor later on in my adolescent phase .I tried to Persut the childhood dream. But,the dictatorship stifled the presute of happiness of any kinds.long story short, I had to fight back all the passion inside me,and presue something that I didn’t have even a shred of interest in it which was my Father’s business.
You see,not all childhood wishful thinkings will come true. Some are hold back with tyranny parents, some are suppressed by totalitarian governments,and some constraint by nature way of doing thongs.
Do u feel me ,Warren
Not everybody has the luxury of set out a dream and follow it through over the course of his/her life
For my money, if you factor in everything you see that just the minority get to flourish childhood dream the rest drop them somewhere on the way.
Warren you nailed it
The video clip of the three year old kid is classic
High end bro
Again ,not everykid has the luxury!
Warren,
I have a question for you
How do you guys come up with a topic to post it there
It is kind of fluke!
I mean ,you guys are walking down the street all of sudden you see something that inspire you for the next blog topics
Or just search Internet coming across sth hip and make a blog topic out of it.
Or there is a topic bank that you pick out of
Please don’t ignore this very question
Answer
I guess all my friends are interested to know how it is done
Dear Warren,
I m totally overwhelmed with tons of sad memories from the past.
I remember last time I said to my father something about my dreams.he dig me a hole and read me his stupid ,fanatic rites.
It is sad, but it is true
Good show Warren,
You always come up with sth idiosyntric
U know what I mean
Sth different
I like it
U have a flair for it
Common people,
Where are you hiding.
No comments on this one,
Very powerful stuff we got here.
No childhood memories ,not even one anectode to share with us.
Don’t be shy.
Come out and say something about the best stage of your life
If you snooze ,u losse
So ,make it snappy:)
Warren,
What is up with fantastic Jeff.
He is almost a no-show
What is with him.
As Busy as a bee( just made up,funny)
He is something ,isn’t he?
He knows his way around linguistic system and how it works. he has a pack with devil:)( good one)
My friend :Warren!
Don’t get me wrong with the whole inquiry about topic picking. I m not inquisitive by nature,and I am not finicky about the topic you guys choose down there.
I just wanna know.
There must be some logic behind it
It can’t be out is fluke simply because all your topics lead somewhere. I mean, there is a sense of direction to it
Another words, Eslpod blog topics has purpouse,either between the line or directly the sentences themsleves.
Areypu with me Warren.
So, it is a quite valid question?
Please, Eslpod don’t ignore me this time around?( it is not a political statement)
i think this topic is full of inspiration. thanks a lot
i like this blog
My dreams have been always after being a child, I think I had dreams being a teenager or even a young man in his tweenties.
I grew up after the Spanish Civil War and all was hard and difficult, if we have enough to survive that´s was alright and on those times children hadn´t dreams at all.
They wanted to eat well, have some toys, to see their parents not angry, and that was all.
Being a boy I would like to go to the University, but none of my friends went to so it seems like a chimera.
It was a dream?
It could be, as I couldn´t go and I have to study technical subjects that I have never have used afterward.
I studied with Jesuits how to be a good delineate or technical engineer, but I never liked this kind of job.
Being a teenager I dreamt about going out from my country.
It was the Franco´s dictators country where I didn´t like to live as I felt myself as an alien.
To be able of going out from Spain on those years it was necessary first to do militar service, so I couldn´t leave till I finished the milatary service, but when I finished it all my life changed as I met a very special girl.
In the meantime I started to learn English just to go to Canada or Australia.
The following is a long story that changed my life in the way of staying here till now.
Now I would like to go out from this country again, in fact I dislike it even more than with Franco, everything is changing to the worst but again it´s impossible as there are another kind of subjects that oblige me to remain here.
Yes, it has to be nice to see a child dreaming about being a music director, a violin player, or a firefighter but never I have seen one in real life.
Just a pity.
Thank you Warren.
emiliano
It is strange
Is There a strike going on that I don’t know of?
Where is Emiliano
Of all the fellow members, I didnt expect Emiliano absence
It is weired
Hi!
As you know most of the inventions were dreams. So we should respect children’s dreams and ours. So it’s very important that you think or imagine they come true.
If you go back and look your dreams, you will find out that most of your dreams have come true in your life, but you forgot them.
Besr regards,
Farah
Asking Cuca about her dreams being a child she has told me hers, and yes I could remember it, she has told me frequently her inner dreams when she was a child.
It´s a funny dream and quite appropriate to the time we were living in Spain on the forties and fifties, she dreamt as owning a comic kiosk full with all kind of comics, having all the time to read them and selling some from time to time.
Life was so harsh for children and adults that we dreamt living other different lifes in the comics or going to theatres watching movies as much as possible.
Spain was isolate from the rest of the world. Franco and his goverment were supporters of Germans in the second world war and when the war was finished we had to pay a high price for this support.
No country wanted anything with us so we lived starved every moment till the year “Ike” came here and made a treatment with Franco to could stablished the USA army in Spain.
It was the time of the “cold war” and Franco was a declared anti-comunist, so to the USA Army was very easy to establish all the army in the Spanish lands.
In the treatment they gave us some food, milk powder and cheese, also they opened frontiers to us.
Spain was out of Marshalls Plan for Europe, but “Ike” promised some help, food and the posibility of being
in the International Institutions.
Near Madrid was the military base of Torrejon, and to me was the first time I could see the big cars of americans soldiers, also alive people with different skin colours, it was amazing.
USA army´s families live in a big house near my house and being a child we liked to go to search these so different people, blonde, blue eyes, dark or yellow skins, incredible, and they live much better than us.
Boys of the neighborhood called this “house” the “Korean House” …why? May be because in it live so many
different rich people or about the Korea war?, I don´t know the reason, but we called the house this way
and it was called so along the years.
The house was in Castellana Street, near the Madrid football Stadium, and I think it is still over there.
Few years ago I think an USA american authority was visiting the Korea House, history after all.
May be this all was the begining of my dreams, I wanted to go out this starved country as soon as possible. I liked to see other much better places and knowing different people with blue eyes and dark or yellow skins.
Once the USA army was here, Spain stoped of being an isolate country. We were admitted in the ONU and so foth…..the sixties came and everything was changing.
We envied all the americans and called them “Yankees” but I liked them, I was in love with the blondies of blue eyes so differents from our girls, ja, ja, yes I could remember my feelings quite good now.
I was always crazy about beautiful blondies with green or blue eyes, Marilyn and Angie Dickinson were was my beautiful women dreams along the years, I was really in love with them.
On the seventies I met a blond beautiful american girl and we were walking along Madrid streets for fifteen
days, she was very very nice, and yes I could fullfilled my dreams after all.
That´s life.
Regards. emilliano
Sorry, it wasn´t the seventies when I met the beautiful blond girl with blue eyes from Illinois, it was at the end of the sixties.
By the seventies I was with my wife already……if she reads the blog we could have some words
about the matter.
But now I could remember another redhead beautiful girl from France, Lille, incredible nice and tender girl.
Yes, I think she was my first love and I met her in Suances (Cantabria) one of the most beautiful seaside cities
of the North of Spain.
We were spending the summer with our families on 1965, if I could going away with her sure I did so, but we
were so young…….yes another dream, nothing to do with being a violin player or similar.
Love, love, always love and going away.
emiliano.
Yes, I know all of you want to know a litle more about Denise the redhead girl from Lille.
She wasn´t Olivia Newton John and I wasn´t John Travolta, it wasn´t “Grease” movie, but our story was similar.
We spent july at the beach together with our families, we fall in love after being together for a month, we danced
“Oh Carol” sung by Neil Sedaka very closed, “Stand by Me” and other hits of the sixties, but she had to return to Lille, her
city, and I had to come back to Madrid.
We were writing each other for a year (she knew spanish very well and I knew a little French), she sent me postcard from
Paris, Lille and other French cities and I wanted to go out from here and see her.
Impossible, it was impossible for me to go out Spain, so young and without anything.
Love was extinguished little by little, but the memories last for ever.
The End.
Regards. emiliano
Another weekend , and one day closer to Christmas with all festive happy moments.all the stores here have done their christmas window already.walking pass them,I enjoy the touch of christmas on them with pine trees sitting on the corners ,dolled up moneecans posing smile , and all the festive decorations. It is all there to spread the christmass sprit. Still ,people busy with their humdrum routines rush pass all the festivity in the air.
Oh,
Emiliano is here
The world does make sense again:))))))
I think this topic is a very difficult one, that’s why not many people post their comments.
I tried to asking myself, what dream did I have when I was a little child?
There was no TV or anything like that when I was little, and I did not know anything or any professions apart from what I saw in my school. I think I should have dreamed of becoming some of the famous people in the text books but I was not smart and I did not get the message that those famous people in the text books were to help us dream of becoming some famous people. So there was nothing for me to stimulate any ‘dream’.
Very sorry, no dream, no comment.
Betty,
Just drop a line off the top of your head. You think I sit and think on what I put down here.
I just read the post and throw in whatever comes to my mind about it. That is all there is to it.
Don’t worry, nobody judge us here.
Don’t feel self-conscious just contribute.that would do it!
Trust me on that
Nobody gets judgmental here on this blog ,and that my friend is the beauty of it.
Hi! Many parents desire a gifted child with outstanding abilities, capable of high performance, an avid reader with interest in science, literature, art, music…
Difficult to be a famous young. I have read a lot, I have had many good marks …but without any high performance. Just a swot? I don’t know.
Hi! But we have many famous young Romanians. For instance Alexandra Nechita is a famous Romanian cubist painter and one of the most famous contemporary artists worldwide.
The media gave her nicknames such as the “petite Picasso”/ Little Picasso and “Mozart with a paintbrush”.
Her paintings are often compared to those of Picasso, Matisse. She began drawing at the age of two and at the age of eight , she had her first art exhibit in Los Angeles.
She lives in the U.S. and graduated UCLA.
She was named Outstanding Artist of the Year; one of the Most Fascinating Women of the Year; one of the 100 Most Interesting People.
This is a gifted child.
Hi! And now the brain hunting is trendy to indentify gifted students. Many young Romanians work in Seattle(the largest city in the Pacific Northwest region of the U.S.) at Microsoft, a computer software and hardware corporation.
Many of them , even from my town, made a lot of inventions.
Mr. Bill Gates visited Romania last year.
Pupils, students are enrolled in gifted programs.
Hi! And we have famous hackers even in the U.S.
Laura, my youngest daughter wanted to be a clown when she was a child.
I didn´t remember but Cuca reminds me about Laura´s desire of being
a clown in future.
She was always telling us bad jokes or making faces and Cuca said to
her that it was alright if she wanted, but she has to be a good clown making
laugh to everybody what is very difficult.
My two older daughters haven´t any dreams about their future, I think,
but I have to ask them about.
Peter, you are really funny and generours, you have made me laugh,
but I was thinking about my dreams and I haven´t any……without
dreams I have write nearly a book?, it´s just incredible.
Thanks a lot Peter and to all of you thanks too, your are really patients with my verbiage.
emiliano
Hi! Thank you, dear Warren. I have listened with pleasure to the Beethoven Symphony no.5. conducted by 3 year old kid & Herbert von Karajan.
Slowly, slowy we can fall in love with the symphony music.
Hi! Incredible pictures of the Earth made by a homemade space baloon.
Hi guys I just got some Q-tips .then,I figured not in a thousand years( no frigging way) Jeff is gonna cover it.
So ,I took the liberty to share the concept with you guys.
Q-tip: is U.S. trademark for cutting bud!
Those small sticks with two small pieces of white cotton mounted on both ends used for cleansing the passage in ears.
Guys ,
Please don’t take me for a jerk. Eslpod is flawless ,no doubt about it
But ,the only constructive critisizm about it is that Eslpod don’t even touches the dark Side of English language:)
I mean if we want to month off ( swear,tunt) sb we don’t know what to say.
It is a valid criticism
Hi, Peter, you are right, I should not be lazy and just told everyone that I had no dream as a child.
Now I remember, I did dream of being a very good policewoman when I saw all those drug addicts in the street where I grew up, but then I was not tall enough to be a policewoman when I reached adult age.
I dreamt of being a good dancer when I discovered that I enjoyed dancing, but I did not have the right figure for it.
I wanted to be a headmistress of a good school when I saw one of my good teachers being sacked unfairly, but then I seemed to have forgotten all about it after a while.
Now one of my daughters asked me what should she become, I dare not to suggest anything because life is so complicated. I could see that she has talent in drawing and music but my husband did not seem to want her to be a painter or musician.
I nearly wanted to ask her what was her dream, but then I did not because a ‘dream’ should be a secret and only be told when it comes true.
Is anyone thinking of the song ‘The Impossible Dream’ at this moment?
Go on, listen to it again from the internet.
It made me cry listening to Aung San Suu Kyi’s speech after her release on Saturday 13 November 2010, such a great woman.
She’s a Nobel Peace Prize laureate and elected Honorary President of the SOAS Students’ Union. She is a ‘dream’ woman, we are very lucky to have such a great figure to show us how to live one’s life as a worthwhile human being.
She talked about fearless. We saw the fearless in Nelson Mandela, in Deng Xiaoping, and now in her.
There had been many great fearless politicians in history, but I am most moved by Aung San Sun Kyi at the moment.
Politics is a very complicated matter, I don’t think I can discuss politics, but I wish Aung San Sun Kyi all the best.
Hi Guys,
when i was a guy, i was dreaming of i’ll be a football player…when i was 20,
i have to choose between the university and the sport. It is very hard decision, because
i start to playing football, when I was 6 years, and i love this game (still).
I play in the team which is in hungarian divison II.
Well, then i chose the university. Now, I’m graduated, and i think
i make the right decision…
So thats my story 😉