“I never got this far in my dream.”

-Bubba Watson-

Last week (April 8, 2012), Bubba Watson won the Masters Tournament at Augusta (Georgia).  His shot from the trees instantly became golfing lore.  The announcer reminded us that Bubba has never taken a golf lesson or “parsed his swing” from a video.  He is, those who know say, a golfing natural.

All of this makes for compelling human interest.  Even for someone like me who is a non-golfer, his story connected with me.  In particular, one statement from his post-tournament Green Jacket interview grabbed me. 

Video recommendation for the week:

When asked about his golfing dream and what this victory meant to him, Bubba said:

“I never got this far in my dream.”

Just a couple days before Bubba’s improbable victory, I had said to a friend at lunch something similar—but not quite as eloquent. The gist of my thought was simple. If you were to have asked me twenty years ago to articulate my professional dream for the year 2012, there is no way I would have (or could have) told you that in those twenty years I would become a professor, author, speaker, and songwriter. In essence,

“I never got this far in my dream.”

For me, that represented an enormous realization. One of my writing and teaching themes is encapsulated in two questions:

• What is your dream?
• What are doing to get to your dream?

 We can plan. We can gather our resources.  And we can analyze every little piece of big decisions we make. And we can end up missing the dream.  We don’t know when we will end up in the rough or the trees (as Bubba did on the last playoff hole).  If we stay focused and true to our journey we will see a way forward.

I recently heard an interview in which the person talked about people “running out of future.”  In essence, his point was that some people get to a point where they have reached their envisioned dream—and then stop there. I guess you could call it “plateauing.”  Bubba put a new twist on it for me.

Do we ever know when we have reached the dream?  Next week—my 100th post to this blog—I will share some thoughts about milestones.  Are they dreams? Endpoints? Benchmarks?  Or are they reminders to stay open to the possibilities of where our dreams can lead us?

Enjoy your week—and H.T.R.B. as needed!

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© 2012. Steve Piscitelli and Steve Piscitelli’s Blog.