When Taylor Swift stood in front of the TV cameras and the packed auditorium in Staples Center in Los Angeles a couple nights ago and accepted her Grammy for Best Country Album, she said, “I just feel like I’m standing here accepting an impossible dream right now.”
I feel you, Taylor. Not that I can boast quite an accomplishment like standing in front of the whole world and accepting a Grammy (yet…lol), yet I can still say with satisfaction (and gratitude) that I feel like I’m living an “impossible dream” of my own. If there really is such a thing as an “impossible” dream.
Get this: if the cameras at the moment of Taylor’s acceptance had instead been focused way up in the bleachers of Staples Center on Section 313, they would have seen me and my girlfriend sitting happily watching the event, my girlfriend in her clothes she especially designed for the Grammys, and me in the tux I acquired last fall through the generosity of a family member so I could look classy at my piano shows. If the cameras had been on my face, they would have captured the look of recognition at Taylor’s words.
For myself, in the last six years since graduating from UC Berkeley with a degree in music, I have been gradually and steadily developing my music career. In that time, I have already accomplished some personal artistic milestones that I am enormously proud of, such as creating a full-time income doing music, releasing a solo piano album, writing a theatrical piece that was produced two years running by a teen opera program.
And now, going to the Grammys.
Sure, I looked at the winners and performers on Sunday night with admiration and saw the gap between where I am currently and where they are. In the past, I may have been down on myself for not being as successful as others I admire are. But this time, rather than feeling bad, I got inspired.
You know why? Because seeing the stars at the Grammys live and in person makes me see that in myself. It makes me see the personal successes that I am ALREADY achieving, and the incredible joy and fulfillment that is now a daily reality for me, not because of a miracle, but because I worked at it day in and day out.
And because I believed.
Now I see that with the commitment and dedication I have put these last six years into developing into the Artist I’ve Always Wanted to Be, it’s not impossible, but it’s only NATURAL that dreams start to happen. Because when you start to take on your dreams, and you act consistently to attain them, you literally start to achieve the “impossible.”
And I know this for a fact.
I mean… I made it to the Grammys, baby!
Personally, as I watched the Grammys from Section 313, where you’re so high up you can’t make out who the speakers and performers are without looking at the big screens, I was happy for each and every performer and award recipient. Because in a way, I feel like I too was receiving a Grammy award of my own.
The Grammy for Believing in the Impossible.
Which reminds me…
What’s your impossible dream?