Let's...

Let's dream for just a minute. Let's clear the fog of routine and cynicism in our heads. Let's throw open the doors and dare to hope.

Let's slow down. Let's take deeper breaths. Let's allow the buildings and trees, minutes and days, smiles and broken hearts that have been blurred streaks of light in our peripheral vision come into focus.

Let's run. Let's pick up our feet and move with urgency because there are people who need our commitment, our dedication, our talent, our words, our care, our love, and not a moment too soon.

Let's explore. Let's get off a random exit and see where it takes us. Let's plunge into the woods at midnight and pray we make it out alive. Let's sit down in a strange restaurant and order strange food from the menu. Let's leap into the unknown and grow as we fall.

Let's stay right here. Let's turn over the couch cushions and see what treasure we've been missing. Let's listen for the hum of the air conditioner, the neighborhood kids dribbling a ball on the street outside, the grinding of the valves in our hearts as they open and close, the slow creaks of pain, the soft chimes of joy.

Let's look back. Let's pick the bones of our mistakes clean of the lessons attached to them. Let's finally hold the kind of funeral for our regrets that lets them burn up into smoke and soot for good. Let's remember the people who have come behind our sputtering car and have given us a push. Let's make our memories buoys that hold us up instead of millstones hung around our necks, dragging us to the floor of the sea.

Let's look forward. Let's dig through all of the dirt, wade through all the muck and mire, break down all of the doors, until we find something worth wanting. Something worthy of our hearts, our hopes, our lives. Let's set it as our North Star, fix our gaze ahead, and move toward it.

Let's sing. Let's belt out the songs we don't want anyone to know we love. Let's twist and shout and shake and rattle and roll and rap and clap. Let's croak all the low notes and screech all the high notes. Let's mouth the words when heartbreak clamps down our vocal cords. Let's whisper the lines that are so heavy with hope, we can't bear to sing them any louder.

Let's try and risk and fail. Let's figure out the difference between wise caution and crippling fear. Let's afford each other the grace for trial and error, to learn as we go, to accumulate some bruises and scratches along the way. Let's pick each other up after every failure, look each other in the eyes, and say, "Keep going."

Let's love. Let's speak the words that we keep corked up like a bottle of wine we may never use--the time to pour it out in the glasses of our loved ones is now. Let's be inspired and release the dam and flood each other with grand gestures. Let's be gritty and gutsy and force the crank at the well slowly up and down to give each other a few small, precious drops during the droughts.

Let's not waste another moment.

Let's not settle for less.

Let's do this all together.

Let's not be afraid to dream dreams like this.

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