Dream

Hyo Jin Moon September 24, 2006 Belvedere, 7:00 am Notes: Joe Kinney

Here are my notes from Hyo Jin nim's speech Sunday 24 September 2006. My ability to convey what was actually said is limited. These, at most, convey some sense of what Hyo Jin nim said and are not a verbatim record.

Joe Kinney

Rev. Andrew Compton is the MC. All welcome Hyo Jin nim and Yeon Ah nim and offer a bow.

(Hyo Jin nim bows to the audience as he approaches the stage)

Please be seated.

Good morning. (Audience responds, good morning.)

Let's talk about Dream. (Laughing)

I'm not talking about fantasies or night mares but about dream.

I guess that everybody knows about Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech.

So when you talk about dream, you're talking about a vision, and when you talk about a vision, obviously you're talking about something greater than your self beyond your personal individual desires or reality, something grander than that. Hopefully if you believe in God it has some kind of religious tone to it.

It is a kind of mission statement. When you talk about a dream, ultimately it becomes a mission statement. I believe. I dream about something. We like to talk in general about, everybody whether you believe in God or not, world peace. We don't want people killing each other. We want harmony. We want peace, prosperity. So that is basically what it is in the end when you talk about a dream; something beyond your self, something greater that involves a higher power.

How one interprets what is a higher power obviously can vary. Communism had its own ideology that lasted about seventy years, and pretty much conquered the world -- almost conquered the world but they failed. It lived about the average life span of an individual human being and disappeared. Nobody will believe it again.

It's something like that. A dream is something grander because its vision oriented. And when you think about a vision obviously it's beyond what you are immediately pursuing and need. So how do you go about achieving something that you immediately need and can achieve?

What ever the circumstances might be, if you make a mission statement, obviously you have to prove it. You're committed. You're basically telling everybody that this is what I am. And you're forcing something to other people, a third party, expectation. That's what you're doing. What you're dream becomes in the end, just for your sanity's sake, your survival's sake; it becomes a need-to-do responsibility; because otherwise you will fail.