“If your dreams don’t scare you they’re not big enough.”

When it’s Wednesday … it’s our SG (small group) day. Tonight is one of the many chapter ender activities that our group is looking forward to. After finishing our discussion on the 4^th indispensible people we must have – Timothy, we are to fulfil Edgar’s bucket list to eat Bulalo at Lucky Plaza and watch the movie “The Walk”.

I didn’t really expect so much from the movie. I saw the trailer once, well the story seemed interesting about a wire walker whose dream was to walk on wire between the then iconic Twin Towers in New York. Can’t imagine though how the movie can stretch for two hours just to showcase a man who will walk on wire.

Turned out the movie was quite insightful, not to mention stressful that my friend described it as more frightening than a horror movie. To me it’s breathtaking. I literally found myself gasping, shouting, perspiring, almost got into another migraine attack while watching the movie. So here I am just doodling some thoughts that keeps running through my mind while watching the movie and even up to this very minute that am typing.

One quote says that  “Dreams are often profound when they seem the most crazy.”  Here is a man who from his childhood already found a dream that kept his heart pounding and even thumping. For most if not everyone, it seems crazy. What would someone get from walking on wire aside from that engrossing feeling, but for Philippe Petit it was art. It was what makes his heart skip a beat.

“It’s impossible, but I’ll do it”.

This is what Philippe said when he first got a glimpse of the World Trade Center’s rooftop.

That’s what dreams mostly are, at least at first … they seem impossible. Come to think of it, most of what we use now for sure was unthinkable years back. When I first held a mobile phone 20 years back , a Nokia 3210 model, I thought that was the most hi-tech discoveries of all time – a mobile phone without antenna. Touch screen was so far off from our minds back then. Someone had to believe that in the midst of that impossibility there’s a way it can be done.  Most often our dreams remain dreams because we are too scared to take that first step – to believe that we can do it.  For some they call it optimism, or for some wishful thinking, but to me it’s far deeper than believing in something,  or something that can be done or even believing in oneself, it is believing that there is that Someone greater than us who can make the impossible possible. We can take that step because we can say this to ourselves with utmost confidence that  …

“I can do all things through him who strengthens me.” – Philippians 4:13

Epic fail is a step towards our epic success.

Philippe’s first wire walk was on a small town festival was an epic fail. On his first attempt to wire walk he fell on a swamp. When we fail on our attempts to pursue our dreams sometimes we either quit or think that “this is not for me” or “I’ll explore something else” worse if we get stuck in that failure that we are afraid to try again. For Philippe, it excited him all the more and made him go for a more dangerous attempt to wire walk between the cathedrals of Notre Dame de Paris.  We will fail at times in our attempts towards our goals but in failing comes learning so that we can do better the next time. You fall. Get back up. Try again. “Failure is not the opposite of success, it’s part of success”. In Jeremiah 8:4. Jeremiah say this to the people of Judah: ‘This is what the Lord says: “you know if a man falls down, he gets up again … “’

Know your terrain.

Another aspect that amazed me was not just Philippe’s determination in reaching for his ultimate dream. He’s not just a crazy dreamer, he prepared well. In the entire 3 months of preparation, every day he will go to the twin towers, take photos the building, getting to know every inch of it. When we want to reach a destination we cannot just walk blindly, we’ve got to know our terrain.

We need a team to reach our dream.

Philippe couldn’t have walked that wire without his “accomplices”. As part of his preparation for his lifelong dream, he needed a team. Just like Philippe, we cannot walk the steel wire of life by ourselves. We need a photographer who will capture and document the fulfilment of his dream, someone who can give a picture of the highlights or glitches of our journey. He had a Jeff who may be afraid of heights but is good with numbers, thus instrumental in calculating the details that he needed for the walk, someone who can help us calculate the risk ahead. We need to  have an Annie who will constantly believe in us and give us courage when doubts starts to creep in. We need to have a Papa Rudy who had walked the wire before us. They are people who have lived life ahead of us and have pieces of themselves to share to us.

I enjoyed this movie a lot. I guess the aftermath this movie has brought me is the fact that it is a gift for one to do what he loves to do. One of the best gift probably one can have on his life here on earth is finding a profession that he enjoys. My birthday is few months away, I wonder if that long awaited gift is on it’s way?