Aug 22 2022
Episode 6 - Dreams, passion and purpose
Dream, passion, purpose.
On Wednesday 28th August 1963, just 15 days after I was born, Martin Luther King shared his dream with over 250000 people in Washington and that dream reverberated around the world.
'I have a dream,' he said and he was not talking about the thing that happens somewhere between when you go to sleep and when you wake up.
His dream was a vision.
Something he saw and believed even though it was not at that time a reality.
And the story behind how he came to share this dream in that speech on that day is incredible.
He had not intended to use those phrases in the speech and was advised not to use them as, in the words of one of his advisors, they were 'trite, cliche and used too many times' in the past.
And although it is likely he had practised them before the speech, they were not in the typed-up text which was on the podium that day.
His speech was going well-ish, but not his normal knock-out, Baptist preacher stuff. Behind him was his favourite gospel singer who, as he was winding up, twice call out to him, 'Tell them about the dream,' and then the magic happened.
That thing, deep within his soul, that dream, that passion, that purpose, came out and slapped them right in the lips.
And the world changed forever. History was made as that thing which he saw came out with all his Baptist preacher teaching and preaching style.
You see this wasn't a speech to black people. It wasn't a speech to white people, nor was it a political speech.
It was a speech about a future which could be so different from the present and that is what a dream is all about.