It’s Week 1 of Football, which means by now avid Fantasy Football players should have drafted their teams and started their road to glorious victory in the season ahead. If you’re not familiar with Fantasy Football – it’s where football fans draft their own “dream teams” comprised of their favored players from any team in the NFL. They follow the players throughout the season and score points in their team when their player scores points. Their fantasy teams compete against other fantasy teams in their league to ultimately go to the “Super Bowl/Finals” game.
All this talk about fantasy football got me thinking… We should do a weekend word post exploring the word Fantasy. But when you look at it’s definition, it’s focuses on imagining things that are impossible or improbable. And while it’s called Fantasy Football – league members are playing a fantasy game with a very real dream to win the “Super Bowl.”
It’s with this in mind that we are going to explore the word Dream in this week’s Weekend Word.
dream
drēm/
noun
- a series of thoughts, images, and sensations occurring in a person’s mind during sleep.
verb
- experience dreams during sleep.
- contemplate the possibility of doing something or that something might be the case.
A dream can mean many things. The original meaning of the word was to encapsulate the dreams we have when we sleep. Over the years the word has taken on a new meaning closer to the second definition of the verb form of dream. We refer to dreams synonymously with goals and things we want to achieve. Imagining the possibility of doing something or what something might look like one day. We dream for many things each and every day – a promotion, new job, getting a good grade on a test, meeting the love of your life, or even winning the Fantasy Super Bowl.
But as the saying goes… Dreams don’t work unless you do. More often than not, unless a miracle like winning the lottery happens, dreams remain a fantasy until you work to achieve them. And then your dreams become goals (another weekend word we explored earlier this year) that you can, and with a little hard work, eventually do reach.
At our schools, children dream of basic things – like having a family, food on the table, a roof over their head, being independent and self-sufficient. By taking the first step and enrolling in our schools they find their first few dreams fulfilled. They get a new family in their fellow students and the nuns and priest that work at the school. They are provided with clothes on their backs, food on the table and a roof over their head for a safe place to live. They are also provided with tools to achieve their dream of being independent and self-sufficient. They work hard every day to gain an education so that they can one-day provide food, clothing, shelter for themselves and eventually perhaps have a family of their own that they provide for.
Sponsor a student at our school now and you can help turn a fantasy into a dream. https://hope4hearts.org/sponsor-a-child/
Dream On!
Cristen
