Castles in the Air

I was, in recent months, at a high school graduation for a friend of mine.  I knew it was gonna be a long couple of hours when the first student speakers actually "hashtagged" something in her speech.

It wasn't until the principal got up that I actually heard something that made my ears perk up.   He summed up Henry David Thoreau's, Walden, with the often quoted advice, "If you advance in the direction of how you imagine your life, not how convention dictates that it should be, then you will find success on a scale undreamed through reasonable expectations."  Immediately, I got a little nudge, from my friend (Martin, I'm writing this for you), as if to say "there's the answer to your questions, kid".

Well I went and looked up the actual quote from the story and it's a little more poetic, if you ask me.

"I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws will be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings...If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them."

Magnificent.

I will now consciously make my way towards those castles my imagination and soul have created, whether that means I have to climb the whole way, or if I discover how to fly there.