I Have a Dream Speech

I HAVE A DREAM TODAY

KABOOM! BANG BANG!! POW POW POW!!! Do you know what that sound is? Do you know where it comes from? I'll give you a second or two to figure it out. If you guessed that it's a terrorist attack, you were wrong. If you guessed that it's the sound of a gunshot you were just about HALF right. It's the sound of dreams taking a bullet to the heart! It's the sound of dreams exploding into chunks of hopelessness! It's the sound of dreams no longer living! It's the sound of young people using the weapon of negativity to shoot down the innocence of dreams and what they can be made of. We need to start hearing the sound of our dreams screaming for joy, screaming "I CAN MAKE IT!"

You ever had a dream so close to being reality that you can smell it? Taste it right beneath your tongue? Felt it tickling the palm of your hand, taunting you to reach and grab for it? I know many of you have mentally strayed away from reality for a short moment just to daydream about what could be or what should be. I know I have. Sometimes I'd just sit in class daydreaming about being done with college before I could even actually begin and earning my degree in science and art. Sometimes I'd get so wrapped up in my dreams that I would grab a pen and paper to start mapping out my future. That's what we all should be doing! Mapping out our future instead of driving blind and falling off course!

The problem with our generation is that we throw away our dreams before we even create them. In today's society, the "American Dream" just seems like a joke. Between the sugar-coated depression we call "a recession" and the foreign wars, we just respond to these events with more negativity. I wanna walk down the halls in my high school and not hear people talking about dropping out of school. I wanna walk down the street and not have to worry about someone trying to rob me. I wanna go to the corner store and not have to worry about being harassed by people who have shot their dreams down long ago. I'm talking about the people who just stand on a block all day like they have no purpose in life anymore. They have become part of the concrete ground and decided to not move forward in life anymore.

I know a great African American man that was not only a gifted writer but a man who knew a whole lot about dreams. Of course I didn't know him personally but I know him through his amazing literary works. Yes, I'm talking about Langston Hughes. He once wrote, "Hold fast to dreams for if dreams die, life is a broken winged bird that cannot fly." Well we want our dreams to do more than fly.

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