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The Exciting Whisper Moving Through the Aisles of Your Spirit

How to find the significance of living

John P. Weiss
5 min readJun 18, 2022
Photo: Carolyn Christine

It’s funny the things that stay with you in life.

The hallway outside my parent’s bedroom contained a framed essay titled, “Keep Alive the Dream in the Heart,” by the late author and theologian Howard Thurman. I don’t know where my father acquired the essay, but it clearly meant something to him.

I wish I had asked him about it, but I never did.

Things hung on walls either inspire us daily or become invisible. Fortunately for me, I often stopped to read the essay on the wall and ponder its meaning. I never forgot it.

The essay opens with the following:

“As long as a man has a dream in his heart, he cannot lose the significance of living. It is a part of the pretensions of modern life to traffic in what is generally called ‘realism.’ There is much insistence upon being practical, down to earth. Such things as dreams are won’t to be regarded as romantic or as a badge of immaturity, or as escape hatches for the human spirit.”

The world is full of people whose dreams were crushed by others preaching pragmatism over romanticism. Luckily for me, my father was a curious blend of both pragmatism and romanticism.

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John P. Weiss
John P. Weiss

Written by John P. Weiss

I write elegant stories and essays about life, often illustrated with my classic black & white photography. www.johnpweiss.com

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