AMAZING THINGS ARE GOING TO HAPPEN

10/16/20

I close my eyes and I can see
The world that’s waiting up for me
That I call my own
Through the dark, through the door
Through where no one’s been before
But it feels like home

They can say, they can say it all sounds crazy
They can say, they can say I’ve lost my mind
I don’t care, I don’t care, so call me crazy
We can live in a world that we design

‘Cause every night I lie in bed
The brightest colors fill my head
A million dreams are keeping me awake
I think of what the world could be
A vision of the one I see
A million dreams is all it’s gonna take
A million dreams for the world we’re gonna make

~ Benj Pasek / Justin Paul The Greatest Showman~

Besides the masks, and people making a little bit of effort to keep their distance, everything is kind of typical. There are racks of clothing and people shopping. I could get lost in the reverie of just being in the store. I was thinking about what I could do for fun because I saw some people kite surfing and they looked so free and happy. I don’t regularly ride a bike, or surf or golf or play tennis or do anything other people do for fun outdoors where it’s easy to forget a lot of what’s going on; most of what I did for fun, involved close contact with other people. I was thinking maybe I should get a kite. I haven’t flown a kite in a long, long time but that would be fun. Meanwhile, wandering the aisles of a store was fun , in a way, but I wasn’t intent upon buying anything, so it was more distracting than fun. I found a sweater I didn’t need, but I could use.

On the checkout line, something caught my eye. It was a lone, square framed picture. Its glittery letters called to me:

“Amazing Things Are Going to Happen.”

I held it in my hands and smiled. Once upon a time I would have passed it by. But as I stood there looking at it I thought- why not?

When I got the picture home, I hung it in the bathroom by the mirror, where I would see it at the start and the end of my day. My husband noticed it and asked, “Did you put this here?”

“Yup” I replied with a smile. He looked at me quizzically. Really?

I didn’t want to get into it, but there are volumes of writing and research on the health benefits of positive thinking. I try to listen to something inspirational every morning. It couldn’t hurt to put these little reminders around – like the mug I have inscribed with “what you believe, you will become” and the “keep dreaming” plaque I dug up from a pile of things I was going to get rid of, and decided to keep. Along with some pictures I’ve taken, and my mask collection, my new purchase could go in a time capsule I’ll assemble about these months that have defined not just a time in history- but what I’ve lost and what I have found during this time.

As I was driving away from the store, Pink’s cover of “ A Million Dreams” was playing. I started singing along. I knew all the lyrics, but I don’t know how. Car singing makes me happy. I wasn’t really looking for signs of “amazing things are going to happen” but my new picture and Pink reminded me how very much I wanted it to be the truth.