A SPECIAL NOTE FROM THE EDITOR:

Dan Pallotta is the kind of man who makes my heart beat faster. Not for the obvious reasons, but rather, because few people have filled me with such excitement and hope for the future as he does. At heart, we're all fantasists and dreamers. But where Dan Pallotta differs from many others is that, in his view, obstacles are not barriers, they're important stepping-stones to birthing our dreams.

In these past, difficult few weeks in our planet's history, through the outpourings of grief, resentment, hatred, compassion, love, the calls to arms and the calls for peace, I have been reminded over and over again of one particular passage in the extract that appears below, in which Dan says that there are certain moments in life when…

"…You're given the chance to create the person you want to be… And the moment when the opportunity to create oneself is greatest is the moment that's the most difficult. And it can only be done by quieting the voices. By listening to what you're committed to instead of listening to what you're feeling. What you're feeling doesn't matter. What you're committed to does. If you can stay with your commitment - with your word - despite whatever horrible things you may be feeling or hearing inside your head, you can win the struggle. You can have your dream."

In the past few weeks, millions of people all over the world have been dreaming of a new world… a world in which words such as hatred, war, enmity, inequality, and persecution are just a dim and distant memory. A world in which our children and our children's children live in total harmony, love, friendship and peace with their neighbors and brothers. Many regard that utopian vision as a fantasy.

In view of the tragic events of September 11th, I feel it's no exaggeration to say that When Your Moment Comes is a book whose "moment", to coin a phrase, has most definitely come.

I defy anyone to read this book (and most especially its final chapter) and not be convinced that, individually and collectively, we have what it takes to achieve this "impossible" dream.

ABOUT THIS BOOK:

When Dan Pallotta decided to do something about the AIDS crisis affecting his friends in the early 1990's, he knew he needed to get involved in a way that galvanized more than just himself and his friends. He knew it would take more than just asking for money. And he knew that people needed to do more than just give money.

And so in 1994 Pallotta came up with what many, including himself, thought was an impossible dream: getting a few hundred people to bike 565 miles down the California coast to raise $1 million for AIDS charities, and just as important, become personally engaged in the cause at hand. A year later, Dan Pallotta's "impossible dream" had become reality.

That was Dan Pallotta's moment, and it is changing people, and the world, every day.

Dan Pallotta is a visionary, author, leader and CEO of Pallotta TeamWorks, America's premier producer of human potential events, and the largest private fund-raising firm in the nation. From that one simple idea he had in 1994, his company has raised more money, more quickly, for the causes of AIDS and breast cancer than any known private-event operation in United States history - more than $160 million to date.

The vision of Pallotta TeamWorks is to change the world - first, by helping people to see beyond the limits they have placed on themselves; second, by helping them see beyond the limits they have placed on the world; and third, by spreading the simple power of human kindness. Over the past eight years, Dan Pallotta has inspired more than 100,000 people to do something bold and challenging in the name of the causes that are important to them. In so doing, he has done more to empower people to reach beyond their comfort zone and realize their individual potential than many of today's best-known personal development teachers.

In When Your Moment Comes, Dan Pallotta draws on his own extraordinary life journey, and helps readers chart their own personal course to greatness through tackling such subjects as:

· Understanding your true calling
· The power of commitment
· How to be a receptor for a magical idea and manifest it into reality
· How the opportunity to create one's true self often occurs amid life's most difficult moments
· How to discover your dream and how to live it
· How to deal with the desire to quit and how to let the obstacles you meet lead your way.

Dan Pallotta believes that social and personal change becomes possible when we are ready to move beyond the boundaries we've imposed on ourselves, and on the world. He believes that humans are essentially dreaming creatures, and that our childhood dreams and aspirations often hold the key to future happiness.

If you've ever dreamed an "impossible" dream… if you've ever wondered how much more there is to you than you have yet discovered… if you've ever longed to dig deeper into your soul and find whatever it takes to make a difference… you owe it to yourself to read Dan Pallotta's book.

INTRODUCTION

In 1980, when I was 19 years old, I became the chairperson of the Harvard Hunger Action Committee. It was the undergraduate student committee at Harvard that was trying to raise awareness and money for the battle against hunger in the United States and around the world. The committee's largest effort was the organization of two fundraisers every year to raise money for Oxfam America, an international hunger relief and development agency headquartered in Boston.

In 1980 and 1981, we organized two campus-wide fasts that each raised around $2,000 for Oxfam. It was a nice gesture, but I felt frustrated. I was involved with The Hunger Project at the time, and I was inspired and compelled by the statistics they were disseminating, which revealed that some 25 million people die of hunger and hunger-related diseases every year, and that two-thirds of these individuals are children. The Hunger Project had set a visionary goal in the 1980s of ending world hunger by the year 2000. The sheer boldness of it captured me. And the numbers kept me interested and impassioned: 40,000 people dying every day of hunger and hunger-related disease. One particularly powerful piece of Hunger Project literature asked you to "imagine that you walked out to your doorstep and picked up the morning paper and the headline read: '40,000 People Died of Hunger Yesterday.' Then imagine that it said the same thing the next day and the next day and so on."

At the same time, I was taking some classes in development economics, and others on the world food system and trends in population growth. The disparities in life expectancy, infant mortality, and literacy rates between developed countries like the United States, and places like Bangladesh and Mali were sickening and sad to me. It was my first real exposure to just how many people were being left behind on humanity's 20th-century journey as some of us rush to get ahead, and my first real exposure to just how desperate being left behind looked. It looked like diphtheria, diarrhoea, malaria, and starvation with no hospitals, no nurses, no food, and no roof over one's head. And it meant being one of a thousand faces in the same condition within a square mile. Horrible imagery. Horrible reality.

I felt that we weren't doing enough - not nearly enough. How could we stand by, knowing this was going on? If you saw someone run over by a car, and they were lying on the road, in pain, bleeding, and dying, you'd pull over to help. So why did we keep driving past sub-Saharan Africa? Why did we keep driving right by the starving children? Surely if there's a hell, it's reserved for the likes of us, I thought. I knew we had more potential than this. Much more. Our legacy, I felt, must be more inspiring. We were young. We were talented. We had the privilege of an education. We were at Harvard. People told us the world would be our oyster when we grew up. We should do more. This feeling grew in me, and it built into a great frustration because I didn't have an idea for what else we ought to do.

That changed on a bike ride one day near my parents' home in Massachusetts. An idea came to me - a big idea - to organize an epic bicycle journey across America the next summer, with dozens of students, all in the name of helping the hungry in the developing countries of the world. But it seemed like an impossible dream to me.

A few weeks later, school was back in session. I talked to my friend Mark Takano about the idea. We spent an afternoon writing down all the different things we'd have to think about. The next week, we began, just the two of us, to go around to the 13 different dining halls at Harvard with a little sign, a sign-up sheet, and some flyers, and we'd sit at a table at the entrance to the halls. When people would come in, we'd ask them, "Would you be interested in bicycling across America for hunger next summer?" The responses went something like this:

"No.""No.""No.""No.""No.""No.""No.""No.""No." "No." "No." "No." "No." "No." "No." "No." "No." "No." "No." "No.""No." "No." "No.""No." "No.""No." "No." "No." "Yes.""No." "No." "No." "No." "Maybe." "No." "No.""No." "No." "No.""No." "No." "No." "No." "No." "No."

A lot of people laughed at us. Some made fun of us. Every night we felt like quitting. But, largely as a result of our work in the Hunger Project, we had come to an understanding about what commitment is, and, rather than act out of what we felt, we were able to act out of our commitment, and we would stay at the table another half hour, another hour, and another half hour after that. But the feeling of wanting to quit was there every time someone laughed at us or rolled their eyes at us or made some kind of a joke, which was about every third person. And around 500 people came through every night. That's at least 100 bad jokes. That's a lot of feeling like quitting.

After a few weeks, we had about 3,000 people tell us, "no." That was the bad news. The good news was that we had about 60 say yes. Sixty may not sound like a lot, but you'd be surprised what you can get done with 60 people who have the fire of heroes inside of them - it's a lot more than what you can get done with 60 couch potatoes. So we had a big meeting for the people who said yes, and we explained the whole project to them. About 40 people ultimately ended up sticking with it.

We set up five different committees to share all the work that needed to be done: one for fund-raising, one for putting the route together, one for training, one for supplies, and one for media. The route committee gathered dozens and dozens of maps and pinpointed a basic rough route across the United States. They said we should take a northern route, because they had been told that bicycle tires tend to melt on the hot desert roads in the southern desert states. Whether it was true or not, it sure sounded harsh, and added to the epic sense of what we were doing. Then they went to every Kiwanis Club, church, synagogue, and Rotary Club directory they could find, and mailed about 2,000 personalized letters out to all these civic and religious groups, asking them three things: (1) Will you find a place for us to sleep for the night? (2) Will you feed us? and (3) Will you help us get local media coverage?

Well, it worked. Slowly but surely, these groups started to write back to us to offer shelter in function halls and gymnasiums, home-cooked meals and potluck dinners, and help with the media. As they wrote back, the route committee began to more specifically pinpoint where we'd be going, based on where there were promises of food, shelter, and showers. The other committees worked hard at all the things they had to do, too.

One woman on the supplies committee wrote a letter to the chairman of Ford Motor Company asking for a fully loaded custom van to go along with us. I thought she was shooting a little too high, but damned if the guy didn't write back and say yes to us, and we had this cool brand-new van with swivel captains' chairs and air conditioning. United Airlines paid for our plane tickets from Boston to Seattle, where the "Ride for Life": as it was called, was going to begin. U-Haul donated a big truck. We all went out and asked for pledges. We organized a giant cocktail hour to which we invited all of our professors, and then we asked them all to make pledges to us. The media committee got us commitments from lots of TV stations and from The Today Show. It was a grand effort - exactly what I'd been looking for. We were fully in the service of this dream, and as the year rolled on, the pace of our activity quickened and intensified, to the point that I really don't know how we had any time left for studying.

Ten months after the initial idea, we were ready to go. A few days after graduation (about 11 of us were seniors), 42 of us - 39 riders and three support staff - went into Boston's Logan Airport with our duffel bags and boxed bikes, and we boarded a plane for Seattle. It was June of 1983.

Nine and a half weeks and 4,256 miles later, we arrived in Boston on our bikes. We had raised more than $80,000 for Oxfam (20 times what we were able to do with our little fund-raisers before), and had appeared on more than 50 local television news broadcasts. We got to ride around Shea Stadium before a Mets game to a standing ovation to the theme from Chariots of Fire - our images projected up on the Jumbo-Tron TV screen in the stands. We were interviewed by Bryant Gumbel on The Today Show and got to tell the entire nation about our story of commitment and accomplishment. Hundreds of wonderful people across the country baked casseroles for us, put us up in their high school gyms, made us pies, took us to McDonald's for breakfast, came out to cheer us on, took us in for home-cooked meals, put on banquets for us, shared their lives and their stories, and made us feel the true generosity of the American spirit.

It was magnificent. We had crossed Washington state; ridden past the breathtaking Cascades; across Oregon; across fields of mint in Idaho; through the rusty stone hues of Wyoming; up and up and up some more over the Rocky Mountains to a place in the Continental Divide called Togwotee Pass, which is a little over 9,000 feet. Twenty-six miles of downhill after we got to the top - nice reward. A few days after that, we could see the Rockies behind us. I can tell you that there's nothing quite like the feeling of looking back over your shoulder at the Rocky Mountains, knowing that you, your bicycle, your friends, and your dream have breached them. You get a particular sense of your potential knowing that you've climbed the Rockies.

We rode across big, flat Nebraska, measuring our progress by grain silos coming, passing, and... gone; across the beautiful rolling green hills of Iowa, Indiana, and Illinois; up and down and up and down and up and down again the rolling pain-in-the-ass Alleghenies in the draining Pennsylvania humidity; on to a meeting with the mayor of Washington, D.C.; past the White House and the Lincoln Memorial; up through Delaware, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and then into Massachusetts, where we crested a hill that revealed the skyline of Boston - a view we had last seen from an airplane almost two and a half long months earlier. We had fulfilled, for that moment, our potential, and accomplished our dream. And I felt we had responded with everything we had to give to the dying children and adults of Africa, and to the cause of starvation everywhere.

Why have I told you this story? Because behind all of the magic and glory and the music that plays in one's head when you hear the telling of this story, there was always the desire to quit. And it was not insignificant. Each of us felt it. Almost constantly, we "felt" like quitting. Almost constantly, we didn't "feel" like doing it anymore. Not only during the riding, but during the organizing phase. It was tremendously demanding every step of the way.

Each time we heard a no from the people at the dining halls, Mark and I questioned why we were doing this. When we started mapping out the route and looked at how many meals and showers and shelters we would need - with less than eight months to get it done - it felt hopeless, and we felt like quitting. When we would go out for training rides in the cold of the Boston fall and winter, we felt particularly hopeless. We knew we were embarking on this 4,200-mile journey, but we had no time for serious training rides. On top of being full-time students, we all had committee assignments for the Ride that were keeping us extremely busy. Plus, most of us didn't even have bikes until later on in the year. So in the spring, we'd start to go out for these 25-mile rides, maybe 35-mile rides, and we were sore and exhausted when we were done, and realized we were not even close to being in shape for what was ahead of us. We were looking at 100-mile days on parts of the journey, and here we were getting in a 25-mile training ride once in a blue moon. That, in particular, made us feel like quitting.

Then, of course, there was the fighting. Forty college students, all frightened, all with their own ideas of how to best organize something, arguing for doing it their way. That was one of the worst parts of it. There were many times when it just felt so divisive that we'd never even make it to Seattle, let alone all the way back home to Boston on our bikes. And we felt like quitting.

And last, but not least, there was the ride itself. I remember the third day specifically. We were in Oregon, and I was incredibly sore from the 170 miles we'd just ridden over the last two days. We weren't even close to having begun, let alone close to being done. It was raining. We had a 75-mile stretch that day, it was morning, and we were only 20 miles into the day. I remember having a sort of panic attack. I remember saying, "I just can't do this. We're at mile 20. We have 20 miles to go to get to the lunch stop. I can't even go the next mile, let alone 20 to lunch. After that, there's another 35 miles to just get to the end of the day into camp. And that's not the end of the week. And even if we finish out the week, that's not the end of the month. We've got three more gruelling weeks like this just to get to the end of the month. And that's not the end of the ride. We have another month and a half to go after that. I'm only 200 miles into this thing, and I've got 4,056 miles to go. I'm exhausted, sore, and wet, and I just want to go home. I want to go home real bad. And to get home, I need to do what I've just done over the last two days 20 more times. Twenty more times I have to go 200 miles. I can't even go another one, forget about 20 or 55 or 4,000. I want to quit, and I want to quit now."

In a moment like this, you're given the chance to create the person you want to be. A lot of people are out there looking to "find" themselves. I don't believe you "find" yourself. I believe that you create yourself. And the moment when the opportunity to create oneself is greatest is the moment that's the most difficult. And it can only be done by quieting the voices. By listening to what you're committed to instead of listening to what you're feeling. What you're feeling doesn't matter. What you're committed to does. If you can stay with your commitment - with your word - despite whatever horrible things you may be feeling or hearing inside your head, you can win the struggle. You can have your dream.

This boils down to a simple, sobering truth: Achieving your dream is not easy. It's hard work, plain and simple. Where most people get tripped up is in forgetting that. They forget how much hard work it is to achieve something truly remarkable, so when the going gets tough, they think something's wrong, and they quit. It's not because they're lazy. It's not because you're lazy. That is one of the myths we want to remove right now. It is literally because you are not prepared, mentally and contextually. You are not sufficiently absorbed in the fact that it will be hard work... To put the hard work into perspective while it's being done - to put the fear and the pain into perspective when it's happening. Anything that you don't expect is a surprise, right? When you get surprised, you often change course impulsively, without thought. With the proper context, the proper preparation, and the proper expectations, you can get through it. If you expect pain and fear and difficulty, then when it comes, you won't be surprised by it. You won't think something is wrong. And you will be less likely to quit.

The basis for what lies ahead is the notion that there is a basic set of principles that applies to dreams coming true, just as there are basic laws that apply to physics, chemistry, and mathematics. It's the ignorance of these laws that kills dreams. If you never studied mathematics, you'd never be able to solve a mathematics problem. If you don't understand the laws of dreams, at some level, you'll be much less adept at solving dream problems. Knowledge can make a difference. Making our dreams come true doesn't have to be a giant mystery.

EXCERPT FROM CHAPTER FIVE
The Trap of Cynicism

Wayne's Story

Whenever you hear the word cynic, you usually think it refers to someone else, but we all have cynical voices inside of us. Recognize when you're about to succumb to the chatter of those voices, and don't do it. They're poison, and they could have kept me from meeting this incredible guy named Wayne....

This past summer, I was flying back to Los Angeles from London, with a stopover in Chicago. I was at London's Heathrow Airport, and I had a couple of hours before my seven-hour flight to Chicago. I wasn't that distraught about the long flight ahead of me because I had used frequent-flyer miles to upgrade to a business-class seat.

I'm standing near the departure lounge for my flight - two hours early - and this little old guy comes walking up. He was probably about 70 years old, wearing khaki pants, those cream-colored shoes that a lot of senior citizens wear for walking, a plaid beret, and a tan 'Members Only-type' jacket. He was very adorable-looking, actually. He also had a little old suitcase - about two feet wide and a foot high, with a plastic handle. He was roaming around the departure area, and looked as if he'd like to talk, so I said, "Hello."

He asked me if I knew where there was a coffee shop, and I said that I really didn't. So he looked around and didn't see one within close distance. He decided he'd take a walk to try to find one. He asked me if I thought he had time. We had two whole hours. So I nicely said that I thought he probably did, and that I wouldn't let the plane leave without him. I found out that his name was Wayne.

After Wayne returned, they let us sit in the departure lounge. I started talking to him and listening to him, like Alan used to listen to people. He told me about his kids and about his life as an engineer. Apparently his reason for being in London had to do with something very, very secret, as he described it, which I thought was really cute and funny, and I didn't probe him any further. It was "classified information," so I respected that, although I have to say that it seemed like he was really itching to tell me whatever it was that was so secret.

Now for several years, I've had this idea. When I fly, I usually sit in business class. I watch all the other people file onto the plane, and it's sort of like a Norman Rockwell parade of people. I'm particularly struck by the older people, whose faces and hands and clothing seem to tell me that they've worked hard all their lives and that they don't have a lot of money. They always seem very vulnerable and a little scared getting on the plane - worried about the flying, worried about where they'll put their bags, worried if they'll fit in the overheads, and all that. I watch them come in, and I say to myself, "Someday, when I see the right person, who looks 'just so', who looks like they've had a hard life, I'm going to ask them if they'd like to sit in my business-class seat, so at least once in their lives they won't feel second class. So at least once in their lives they'll be treated to the linens on the tray, and the fine service and plush treatment that they deserve."

So I'm sitting there looking at Wayne talking to me, and a voice in my head says, "This is the guy, this is the guy to give your business-class seat to." Then, another much more cynical voice in my head popped up and said, "Come on now, let's be reasonable and practical about this, this is no time to be a nice guy, this is a seven-hour flight. Are you crazy? This is your vacation. You earned this seat. Give up your seat on a shorter flight - not on a seven-hour Atlantic crossing. Come on now, just forget about this - really. You're going to be miserable back there in coach. Don't do it."

While these two voices were at work in my head, I asked Wayne if he'd ever sat in business or first class before, and he said no. I felt a clear sense that one of my moments had come. I thought to myself, Geez, I think I'm really going to end up doing this. I had a kind of internal knowing about it, which is always there when it's an idea whose time has come. There's a sort of inevitability to it, and all you have to do is play out your role. I asked myself what Alan would do, and the answer was clear to me. But I wasn't as saintly as that. I said to myself, "Okay, let's see his ticket - if he has an aisle seat in coach, at least I'll be able to stretch my legs out. I hate those middle seats. I get claustrophobic. If he has an aisle seat, I'll do it." So he said he was in 25G - an aisle seat. I went up to the front desk and asked the ticket agent if I could switch seats with Wayne. I told her he was a guy who'd never sat in business class in all his life and I wanted to do something nice for him. I asked if she could transfer my business-class seat to his name so he wouldn't get booted out when they found him sitting there.

She looked at me, and after a long pause, said, "Wait a minute... I'll tell you what. How'd you both like to sit in business class? Here are two seats in business class next to one another. Enjoy your flight. I have to tell you that in 11 years working this desk, I've never once seen anyone do this. It's very nice of you. So I want you both to sit in business class."

So Wayne and I sat in business class the whole way back. I told him about Alan, and he told me about his wife and a woman he loved who recently died of breast cancer. And he told me about his work and his life. I showed him how to use the little personal video player so he got to watch movies, and he was treated to linens and silverware and a nice meal and dessert, and extended leg rests, and all the other amenities of business class.

When I went up to him and told him he was going to get to sit in business class, you should have seen his face. It was like it was the nicest thing anyone had ever done for him. It made me cry inside, and it felt incredibly fulfilling. I felt, once again, that I was living out my true calling. When I make my calling kindness, it's not very difficult to find at all.

I also learned from that incident that the universe doesn't want us to be martyrs. The universe stands for bounty. It's not either/or. The universe doesn't say, "Either he sits in business class or you do, but one of you has to suffer a bit." The universe isn't cynical that way. It clearly wanted both of us to sit in business class. I actually think that God wants to put everyone in business class. In fact, I think He wants us all in first class.

"Cynic: A person disposed to rail or find fault; now usually. One who shows a disposition to disbelieve in the sincerity or goodness of human motives and actions, and is wont to express this by sneers and sarcasms; a sneering fault-finder." - Oxford English Dictionary, 1999

The earth is flat. No one will ever run a four-minute mile. Slavery is a fact of life. The sun revolves around the earth. A man on the moon is a pipe dream. These were not the opinions of cynics; these were facts. Cynicism masks itself as truth, crushing dreams and suffocating imagination in its wake. There will never be a cure for polio. Human beings will never fly. The stock market will never go above 1,000. Facts. No one will ever want to watch a 90-minute animated cartoon. Cartoons are supposed to be five minutes long because that's how long they always have been. "American Pie" is a nine-minute song. Radio won't play songs longer than three and a half minutes.

These were things that the cynics "knew," and anyone who challenged them was laughed at as naive, impractical, and foolish. The cynics, you see, are never naive, impractical, or foolish. They're guided by accepted norms. They conform. Their lives and their opinions can be predicted. They take no risks. They never walk close to the edge. They don't buy books like this. They walk on the side of the trail closest to the mountain.

Today the cynics have different facts - new things they "know." Humans have always fought one another in wars and they always will - you can never end war. Hunger is a basic fact of life - there will always be people who are hungry. True love is a pipe dream - relationships don't really last, and if they do, it's because you both settle for some compromised version of love. Gay relationships don't last. Crime is a basic fact of life. There's no life on other planets. No human being will ever travel close to the speed of light. And to see the power of cynicism, notice how you and I don't regard these ideas as opinions. We regard them as facts.

Part of the reason you don't pursue your dreams is because you have facts to back up the obstacles. You don't have an "opinion" that you could never become president of the United States. You "know" it. Come on - you know that, right? You know you could never be president, don't you?

John Kennedy once said, "The problems of the world cannot possibly be solved by the skeptics or the cynics, whose horizons are limited by the obvious realities. We need people who dream of things that never were." Let's break that down.

"The problems of the world cannot be solved by the skeptics or the cynics." Kennedy defied all the odds to become president of the United States. He was the youngest president ever elected - during a time when it was "known" that no Catholic could be elected president of this country. So here's a person with some experience in the arena of achieving dreams, telling us that the skeptics and the cynics aren't the ones who will be leading us into the future. He's telling us that they lack the basic skill-set to solve the problems of the world. Yet we continue to be guided by cynics and skeptics.

"Whose horizons are limited by the obvious realities." All cynics can see is what's real already. They can't see things that aren't yet real. They only believe in the obvious, not in that which isn't. The dictionary definition of dream is: "To fall into reverie; to indulge in fancies or daydreams; to form imaginary visions of (unrealities)." So cynics can't see a world without hunger; they can't see you completely changing your career; and if you asked them, they would tell you that you're foolish, ridiculous, and naive beyond words. They would dismiss you. And many of the people who would do this would have impressive resumes and credentials - they're often experts. Professors. Teachers. Captains of business.

Cynics don't attempt to visualize a great dream coming true. They're also unable to see their destiny. That's why they believe only in the obvious physical realities, which can be seen with the human eye. Your destiny is seen by an inner eye, which is mystic. Cynics don't know about mysticism. They're disabled in this arena. And they're dangerous, because they don't know that they're disabled. They think they're perfectly clear, but in fact, they're perfectly blind.

"We need people who dream of things that never were." This is the president of the United States saying that we need wizards, sorcerers, and mystics. We need imagination. We need ideas. We need people who are willing to stand in the face of all that's known, real, and given. And we need them to dream in the face of this overwhelming reality. This is the part of us that loves The Wizard of Oz. This is the wizard in us. This is what we're meant for. Do not feel childish for being drawn to wild dreams, even though the cynics will attempt to make you feel just that. It's your nature to be drawn to these things. You're normal!

All you need in order to be a cynic is a set of vocal chords. And whenever someone starts talking about a dream, cynicism starts showing up, like pigeons around bread scraps. In 1927, when movies were exclusively silent and the idea of putting sound in them was being proposed, Harry M. Warner, the head of Warner Brothers Studios, asked, "Who the hell would want to hear actors talk?" When my dad said he wanted to do the Montana AIDS Vaccine Ride with me, the voice of cynicism said, "He can't do that. Find something easier for him"

What are the things you "know" you could never achieve? What are the things you "know" we as a society could never achieve? What part does cynicism play in your life? Where does that come from? What do you remember you didn't do because you were told you couldn't? How do you feel about that?

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