I dedicate my song today to three people who celebrate their birthday today. Happy birthday to Finbarr Hickey from Carrick-on-Suir in County Tipperary, Ireland. Also celebrating their birthday in County Tipperary is Declan Hogan. The final birthday celebrant is Jesse Kitchen from Perth in Western Australia. Jessie has been a friend of the Forde family for the past twenty years since my son, William travelled parts of the U.S.A. as a backpacker before going to live in Australia. I hope that your special day is a memorable one. Thank you for being my Facebook friends. Bill
My song today is ‘Hold on Tight’. This song was written and performed by the ‘Electric Light Orchestra’ (ELO). The song is track twelve on the band's 1981 album ‘Time’ and was the first song released as a single. The song went top ten in most countries, hitting the top spot in Spain and Switzerland, Number 2 in Germany, Number 4 in the UK, and Number 10 on the US ‘Billboard Hot 100’ chart, as well as being Number 2 on the US ‘Billboard Top Tracks’ chart in September 1981.
At the time, the song's music video was the most expensive ever made at the time, with a budget of approximately £40,000.
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There are so many things that one should hang on tight to, and included among such would be family, heritage, country, flag, friends, good neighbours, soul mate, children, health, hope, and happiness. All these are good things to hang on to, but chief among them is, ‘Hang on tight to your dream’.
I believe that dreams can come true because dreams are a natural life force. Without that possibility, nature would not incite us to have them. Before one’s dreams can come true, however, one first has to become a dreamer.
The greatest dreamer I ever knew was my mother, and although I am soon to be going on 78 years of age, I have dreamed most nights of my life. From being as small as I remember, my mother told me, “Billy, to step on another person’s dream is worse than dancing on their grave. It Is like choking the hope of tomorrow out of them”.
After an horrific accident damaged my spine at the age of 11 years, leaving me with life-threatening injuries and being unable to walk again for almost three years, dreaming and the power of imagination and mental instruction, proved to be lifesavers for me. My twisted torso was wrapped around the drive shaft of the wagon which knocked me down and ran over me, puncturing my lungs, breaking every limb in my body, crushing my chest, and mangling my legs. When the medics told me that I would never walk again, only dreaming that I would, enabled me to make it happen.
Don’t get me wrong. I was not hanging on tight to some fanciful notion of the impossible to miraculously happen. Despite being a young boy, even then I was far too pragmatic a person for conceiving impossible avenues as being ‘a way out’ of my problem zone. It was true that I have always believed in God, and in the power of prayer to intercede in one’s troubles, but I have also believed that even God expects us to do what we can to help ourselves as much as possible. Even devout Christians imploring God to help put out the flames do not throw petrol on an already blazing fire!
In any problem situation, you start where you are (the reality of the situation), you use what you have ( all your positive attributes of practical brain power, physical traits, and psychological strengths), and you do what you can to positively take yourself forward (make your end goal your mental target and not the time it might take you to reach your destination). To achieve this, one has to ‘temporally suspend’ normal rationale, and to allow oneself to dream that they might live forever, as well as living as though one might die today.
Between the ages of 11 and 21 years, I had to isolate my mind and body from many of my peer group who could not understand what I was trying to do. I surrounded myself constantly with things I believed in and with people who believed in me. This often meant that I found it easier in the company of men and women who were older than I was and emotionally more mature than my peer group. Much of what I planned and executed, I conceived in my own mind and I carried out when I was alone.
The most important thing I have discovered over the years has been that so many of our dreams at first seem ‘impossible’, but if we continue to hold fast to our dream, in time our dream becomes ‘improbable’. Then, one finds an inner physical strength and mental fortitude, so that when we summon the will, the ‘improbable’ changes to the 'possible’, and before one knows it, the ‘possible’ has become the ‘inevitable’.
I know that many of you will consider this mental and physical combination impossible to come about, but for thousands of years, humans have been able to endure the inexplicable and create a state of mind beyond that place where most thinking cease to operate. I realise that most of my readers (however positive they think of me), will not be able to conceive of the possible logic and truth in my words today; not because of any lack of intelligence on their part, but due to an impoverishment of faith in self, in God, and the power of the mind over the body. All I ask of you is to look for 'the proof in the pudding'. It is by what a man does that he is judged, and It is through what a man is that he is known,
When most people ask “Why?”, I answer them “Why not?” Millions of people have looked at the moon nightly, and some societies even worshipped the moon as a God for centuries past. Some poets even wrote nursery rhymes about cows jumping over it, but it was not until mankind conceived the ‘possibility’ by dreaming of one day travelling there and setting foot upon it, that man found the means to make it happen!
Please, do not grow into old age having lived a life of permanent regret. Please do not allow your regrets in life to be the only things you recall in your rocking chair of senility as opposed to your dreams you realised. Hold on tight to your dreams, for if dreams die, life becomes no more expansive than a broken-winged bird that cannot fly. Never narrow horizons of possibility. Never believe that you are too old to dream, and never give up on a dream just because of the time it will take to accomplish it. The time will pass anyway.
Love and peace Bill xxx
My song today is ‘Hold on Tight’. This song was written and performed by the ‘Electric Light Orchestra’ (ELO). The song is track twelve on the band's 1981 album ‘Time’ and was the first song released as a single. The song went top ten in most countries, hitting the top spot in Spain and Switzerland, Number 2 in Germany, Number 4 in the UK, and Number 10 on the US ‘Billboard Hot 100’ chart, as well as being Number 2 on the US ‘Billboard Top Tracks’ chart in September 1981.
At the time, the song's music video was the most expensive ever made at the time, with a budget of approximately £40,000.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
There are so many things that one should hang on tight to, and included among such would be family, heritage, country, flag, friends, good neighbours, soul mate, children, health, hope, and happiness. All these are good things to hang on to, but chief among them is, ‘Hang on tight to your dream’.
I believe that dreams can come true because dreams are a natural life force. Without that possibility, nature would not incite us to have them. Before one’s dreams can come true, however, one first has to become a dreamer.
The greatest dreamer I ever knew was my mother, and although I am soon to be going on 78 years of age, I have dreamed most nights of my life. From being as small as I remember, my mother told me, “Billy, to step on another person’s dream is worse than dancing on their grave. It Is like choking the hope of tomorrow out of them”.
After an horrific accident damaged my spine at the age of 11 years, leaving me with life-threatening injuries and being unable to walk again for almost three years, dreaming and the power of imagination and mental instruction, proved to be lifesavers for me. My twisted torso was wrapped around the drive shaft of the wagon which knocked me down and ran over me, puncturing my lungs, breaking every limb in my body, crushing my chest, and mangling my legs. When the medics told me that I would never walk again, only dreaming that I would, enabled me to make it happen.
Don’t get me wrong. I was not hanging on tight to some fanciful notion of the impossible to miraculously happen. Despite being a young boy, even then I was far too pragmatic a person for conceiving impossible avenues as being ‘a way out’ of my problem zone. It was true that I have always believed in God, and in the power of prayer to intercede in one’s troubles, but I have also believed that even God expects us to do what we can to help ourselves as much as possible. Even devout Christians imploring God to help put out the flames do not throw petrol on an already blazing fire!
In any problem situation, you start where you are (the reality of the situation), you use what you have ( all your positive attributes of practical brain power, physical traits, and psychological strengths), and you do what you can to positively take yourself forward (make your end goal your mental target and not the time it might take you to reach your destination). To achieve this, one has to ‘temporally suspend’ normal rationale, and to allow oneself to dream that they might live forever, as well as living as though one might die today.
Between the ages of 11 and 21 years, I had to isolate my mind and body from many of my peer group who could not understand what I was trying to do. I surrounded myself constantly with things I believed in and with people who believed in me. This often meant that I found it easier in the company of men and women who were older than I was and emotionally more mature than my peer group. Much of what I planned and executed, I conceived in my own mind and I carried out when I was alone.
The most important thing I have discovered over the years has been that so many of our dreams at first seem ‘impossible’, but if we continue to hold fast to our dream, in time our dream becomes ‘improbable’. Then, one finds an inner physical strength and mental fortitude, so that when we summon the will, the ‘improbable’ changes to the 'possible’, and before one knows it, the ‘possible’ has become the ‘inevitable’.
I know that many of you will consider this mental and physical combination impossible to come about, but for thousands of years, humans have been able to endure the inexplicable and create a state of mind beyond that place where most thinking cease to operate. I realise that most of my readers (however positive they think of me), will not be able to conceive of the possible logic and truth in my words today; not because of any lack of intelligence on their part, but due to an impoverishment of faith in self, in God, and the power of the mind over the body. All I ask of you is to look for 'the proof in the pudding'. It is by what a man does that he is judged, and It is through what a man is that he is known,
When most people ask “Why?”, I answer them “Why not?” Millions of people have looked at the moon nightly, and some societies even worshipped the moon as a God for centuries past. Some poets even wrote nursery rhymes about cows jumping over it, but it was not until mankind conceived the ‘possibility’ by dreaming of one day travelling there and setting foot upon it, that man found the means to make it happen!
Please, do not grow into old age having lived a life of permanent regret. Please do not allow your regrets in life to be the only things you recall in your rocking chair of senility as opposed to your dreams you realised. Hold on tight to your dreams, for if dreams die, life becomes no more expansive than a broken-winged bird that cannot fly. Never narrow horizons of possibility. Never believe that you are too old to dream, and never give up on a dream just because of the time it will take to accomplish it. The time will pass anyway.
Love and peace Bill xxx
