Prince Ea: “Hey, you! Why do you exist? Life is not meant to simply work, wait for the weekend, and pay rent. No, no, I don’t know much, but I know this: every person on this earth has a gift. And I apologize to the Black community, but Martin Luther King, he never had a dream—that dream had him!”
Hey, You! Why do you exist?
Prince Ea
I have listened to this spoken verse many times before, but it has never resonated in my core like it did today. The dream that chose me is taking me on the off-road trail. Of course that is something that I would look at from the trail-head and instantly agree to.
For me, grabbing the dream was easy. Starting things always is. It runs in the family. My dad has a thousand projects at home waiting to be finished. The house is in a perpetual state of construction, tyvek and finishing boards moving from place to place periodically. Following through, however, is the challenge for me.
The dream that chose me is a dream of environmental synergy. I aspire to be not just a guest on the planet, but rather a conscious steward of the earth. I know that I am going to create an impact on the earth and on the environment, but if I am careful, I will be able to not only minimize the impact that I make, but create a positive impact on the land that I occupy. For example, rather than building a house that is much larger than I need, I am building a tiny house where I will be directly involved in the entire process of the production of the building. I have created methods for sustainable electricity production, water conservation, up cycling the wasted gray water, reducing the amount of garbage through composting and reduced consumption, reducing the need for electricity, and latent water heating. These aren’t major changes, but making them reality is merely a matter of putting them a couple of notches higher on the priority list.
A former student of mine, Anders, created a podcast that raises an unpopular opinion, but one that deserves a much wider audience. He talks about the environmental ethics of LNT (Leave No Trace). LNT, which is colonial by its very nature, disregards the contributions by centuries of Native populations in the Americas. I find this to resonate with the dream that found me over the last ten years.
https://open.spotify.com/episode/48VBrgrC8CYDCuV2gUpPbz?si=4R1zziakR6u0PzGAk9rENg
Prince Ea: “See, people don’t choose dreams, dreams choose them. So the question I’m getting to is, do you have the courage to grab the dream that picked you, that befits you and grips you, or will you let it get away and slip through?“
Do you have the courage to grab the dream that picked you?
The question Prince Ea had was, “do you have the courage to grab the dream that chose you?” Yes, I grabbed that dream, but the question I’m asking myself is, “do you have the courage to hold onto that dream when it takes you into situations beyond your control and beyond your comfort?” The rest of the video was an important reminder:
Prince Ea: “Yeah, you will struggle, no way around it. You will fall many times, but who’s countin’? Just remember, there’s no such thing as a smooth mountain.”
I have been really struggling with staying energized. If I don’t make a list of things to do each day, or food to cook each evening, I arrive home every day so exhausted that I just lay on the floor until bed time. I look forward to the weekend, but I spend the whole weekend working on the house. This is a good reminder to myself to do things to surprise myself every once in a while, like swimming in Lake Superior in late March/early April. The mountain is not smooth, but there’s something special about looking out across the plains and valleys from atop a mountain.
Don’t forget the dream. The dream chose me, and I grabbed it. I talk about the environment and earth science with kids everyday and I get paid to do it. I get to work on building a low-impact tiny house every weekend. I live in a place where I can go backpacking from my doorstep, and never have to step foot in a car to get there. I am living the dream. It’s not easy. I have fallen more times than I can count, but who’s countin’?
I have found my mountain, and this is my call to take a short snack break to look around at the scenery behind me. What are all the beautiful things that I have seen in the last year? What are all the opportunities that I have taken? So many great things have happened, and even though the air is thin, and I am exhausted almost to the breaking point on this mountain, I am proud of where I am.
Get Outside and Do Stuff 