Sueñitos

The Bearded One and I celebrated our fourth wedding anniversary this week. We still didn’t quite feel comfortable planning a trip anywhere significant, but we both took time off from work, and went on a few little mini adventures. We drove to a couple of restaurants in nearby towns and reminisced about some of the bigger adventures we’ve had in the last few years. We also napped and rested some the last few days, and relaxed in our yard, watching the fireworks from afar last night. And today, for the first time since the pandemic started, we went to a movie in the theater.

Although many people’s introduction to Lin Manuel Miranda’s work was Hamilton, I first heard about “In the Heights” (the Broadway version, of course) about a decade ago–I was instantly hooked. As someone who used to teach Spanish, and has always appreciated the cultures and music (and, let’s be honest, food) of Latin Americans, I loved it. From the opening “In the Heights” to the sassy “No Me Diga” to the hopeful “96,000” to the rousing “Carnaval del Barrio” to the moving “Alabanza”, I listened to the soundtrack over and over until I could sing along with every song, and then I listened to it some more. But even though I can still recite every word, I’ve never seen it onstage. And, although the movie mostly followed the same story as the stage soundtrack, it seemed to me that it was even more heavily focused on dreams. Again, I’ve never seen the stage version, so maybe the same focus is there, and it just didn’t come through on the soundtrack, but there seemed to be a lot more mentions of dreams in the movie.

Of course, Usnavi talked about his dad’s “sueñito” (or “little dream”), and his own little dream, and even Vanessa’s. But as much as Usnavi talked about dreams, the quote that stood out to me the most, watching the movie in the theater today, was said by Kevin Rosario (played by Jimmy Smits), “Start small, dream big.” I won’t go into the story too much because, if you haven’t seen the movie yet, I think you should consider watching it and I don’t want to be the source of spoilers. But you don’t really need to know the story for that phrase to hit you.

I do a lot of self reflecting about where I am in life and where I want to be, and I still get caught up in the day-to-day, and forget to work towards my dreams sometimes. But there are little nudges all around us to go after our dreams and make our lives what we really want them to be, and I’m grateful that the artists out there making movies and tv shows and music write lines that remind me to think about what I want. I have sueñitos too, and the obstacles I have to overcome to achieve them are nothing compared to the challenges most people face. It’s easy, especially for those of us who were born in the U.S. and grew up never having to worry about basic survival, to get complacent, and to settle for lives that aren’t as meaningful as they could be. It can be scary to try new things and to go after what you really want because, holy crap, what if you fail. But the more frightening thing for me is to imagine getting to the end of my life and wishing I had taken more chances and gone after the things I really wanted. So, I’m working on starting small. I’m not sure I want to tell the entire blogosphere what all of my dreams are quite yet, but I have some new things on the horizon, and I’m excited to give them a shot.

And don’t forget, it’s never too late to work towards a goal. That’s not to say that you can do anything you want, at any time, exactly–self-awareness is an important component to goal setting. But achieving goals doesn’t usually happen by accident. You have to know what you want and work toward it to see results. And there’s no better time than now to get started. My weekly planner has a different quote for each week and, fittingly, this was the quote for this week:

See what I mean? Nudges all around…