Sometimes the idea of what I am about to do: leave my home, my friends, my family, my life, my job, every morsel of security I have, all to chase a figment of a dream I don’t even fully understand, paralyzes me with me this intense foreign fear. Sometimes it passes quickly, other times it lingers with doubtful tendrils.

I was lucky enough to spend the past weekend in Nashville, Tennessee, where the hundreds of dreams I happened upon overcame me. Wisps of dreams on the street, dreams turned to hope on the tiny honky-tonk stages, hope made real on the historical Ryman Auditorium stage. I listened to a sidewalk band with a string and old broomstick attached to an overturned tin bucket for an upright bass, a washboard made with a license plate, and a guitar. I heard talent here and even more talent there, put my money in the buckets as they came around; dreamers have bills to pay too. Some are born here, others just know this is where they belong. Many risked so much to get here, left everything they knew, the jobs they had, families behind, put another life aside for dreams of something more. Something maybe unseen to others, but something very real.

And it gave me hope.