“Shoot for the moon, then even if you miss, you’ll still land among the stars.”

One lovely blog reader (Thanks JH) added this as part of a response to a recent blog, and it gave me such a lovely visual and feeling of bouncing or dancing amongst the stars I simply had to write about it. Whenever I fly, if we are going through the clouds or just above them, I always visualise myself jumping out the window and playing in them. In a childlike fanciful way, not a life threatening way!!

The idea of having seemingly too many goals, or aspirations so great they seem impossible has always enticed me into setting them. The glass half full attitude I feel I was born and nurture to retain, serves this well too, as being an optimist, even if they sound ridiculous when I read them out loud, or list them together like I did the other day, they don’t ever seem unreachable!

The image of a shooting star, amongst the clouds helps me believe anything is achievable. When my mother came to visit me at the Heritage listed Function Centre I ran when I was cooking for a living, she said I had told her I wanted to run a Reception or Function Centre when I was 12 years old! I have no recollection of this, but it seems goals must have a way of sneaking up on us, just so long as we make them? So dream on I will, in my conservative and vaguely grounded way, without any great need to get to the top of the mountain, but enjoying the climb on the way.

This attitude seems to be serving me well living with the diagnosis and symptoms of dementia, and even though I have been told many times by well-meaning friends or professionals, ‘no matter what positive or holistic things I do, it [dementia] will me in the end’, it is worth dreaming it won’t, or I can delay it for longer than the initial prognosis! Who cares anyway; being born is a death a sentence, and we live until we die, so we might as well live as well as possible while we are still breathing.