Given the fact that most people are stuck at home, amid COVID-19 wonderful display of might, I thought I would share a reminder during this quiet time. A little story of my past that has become a lifelong lesson.
Ready to officially start my life as a creative, I had to go through various levels of selection to be admitted to my desired university. One of the key cuts was to have a group interview with an acamedic member of the Architecture and Design Faculty.
My interviewer was a man who I deeply admired. I had had the chance to work with him earlier in the year as part of a high school internship during my senior year. My 17 years old eyes were delighted to see him as my interviewer. I always welcome a familiar face, especially when I am anxious. The interview was in a dark office with dark wood furniture, and it smelled beautifully. The questions were open and inviting to boost a conversation. They were somewhere between formality and informality —later I would learn my entire undergrad was balancing on that border.
The professor started with an easy and standard question: "How do you see yourselves 10 years down the line?" The four potential students’ panicked faces must have been a sight. We all said —mumbled— "we don’t". And it was true! It was' not anxiety, inmaturity or lack of self-awareness. At least not on my part. I, full of pride of being honest and straight-forward jumped into explaining where the hesitation to answer resided. With so much variables in life there was very little room to speculate about one’s future; one’s true future was not clear and why bother talking about it. Giovanni’s eyes filled with disappointment, not in us, but in the reality that these four teenagers in front of him had grown up somehow leaving hope and dreams behind them.
We are talking about a group of young people who aspired to build a creative career —many of us against our parents' best hopes. The interview continued with no major highlights. Towards the end of it, the entire mood shifted into a sudden inspiring life lesson that I carry with me through the years. Giovanni looked at each of us and shared openly and in detail the value of imagination for the sake of it. Fantasy, storytelling and imagination used as means and tools; as a way of life. He pinned down any possible interesting outcome as creatives in the possibility of dreaming, moreover in the responsibility we would engage by living in this tricky line between practicality and intangibility. I have kept those words, bouncing around from experience to experience, from project to defeat to success to life.
Our posibility of dreaming as humans is real. And, as creatives we have trained this possibility and made it a skill, an assest, a gift. In unprescedent times like the ones we live today, may dreaming be the path.
To DREAM is my job. To dream that stillness will bring abundance. And for the time being, abundance of patience, compassion and homefullness.