I Make my Dreams Come True.

What is a dream? Is it an aspiration? A hope? Dictionary.com can't even provide me with a concrete definition of to dream. One definition says it is a goal, an aspiration, or an aim. The definition continues that a dream is a wild or vain fancy. The website also states to dream is to form in the imagination or to devise. Dream in the adjective form means most desirable. There are so many options for such a small word! To dream can mean anything! One word holds a person's deepest wishes and loftiest goals. The word dream can be anything it wants to be. But can you?

I remember being in second grade and writing a letter to myself to open at a later date. We were instructed to write two things: (a) what we wanted to be when we grew up, and (b) where we saw ourselves upon high school graduation. I opened that letter the day I graduated high school and read this sentence: "I want to go to Brigham Young University and be a financial planner". Not I want to be a fireman, or I want to be a princess, or I want to be famous. No. At the age of eight years old, I found myself being frighteningly realistic for a child. Now here I am -- 12 years later -- trying to decide what to do with that dream. Through high school the dream evolved to include New York and working on Wall Street. Then it changed to a cupcake shop, then a wedding planning business, then a life in San Francisco. I have faced more uncertainty about my future since opening that letter then all the time before it. Life gets more unsure every day, yet more exciting. Some days I crawl in my bed longingly for my easy 8-year-old life. But now, as I write this a week before my 20th birthday, I am excited with all my options. I know that I could be anyone I wanted to be and if I don't like it, I have the options to stop and start again. I could be an accountant, a wedding planner, a cupcake baker, and any other thing I want to be, because I have the drive and determination to find my passion. Those two qualities are how you make a dream your reality. Dreams are conquered through a person's own willingness to sacrifice and get where she wants, not through luck. So just keep dreaming and make your dreams your reality.

-Kate