The Chicago Cubs, Big Dreams and Knowing Each Other's 'Someday'

After the final out of Game 7 of the Chicago Cub winning World Series, Nike aired an ad called ‘Someday.' It features a young boy playing all the positions on the dirt of a baseball diamond at a local baseball field. He pitches, he catches, he bats, he commentates, and when he hits the game winning run, he celebrates. He’s dreaming big. He’s dreaming that someday his team will win the World Series. And he’s dreaming that one day he’ll win it too.

As I watched the video I thought about the dreams of the kids who walk past my office window on their way to school each day. The boy across the street who lives with his mom and his grandma and plays road hockey after school with the neighbor boy whose dad came down with cancer last winter. The two sisters who have to chase their dog back into the house before they run to meet the bus; the youngest sister dragging her big backpack on the sidewalk and yelling “Wait up!” to the older one who’s wearing her beats and singing under breath and snapping her fingers as she walks. The little boy whose family arrived in Canada from Syria last month and who holds tightly to the hand of his mom as she wearily pushes the new baby in its stroller.  

What are their dreams? Winning the Stanley Cup? Finding a cure for cancer? Being the next Beyonce? Making friends?

I thought of the teens who attend my church. The 15 year old who seems to grow an inch each week. The high school senior who sings in the praise team. The boy wearing the ball cap who sits low in his chair and sleeps through the service beside his mom and her boyfriend. What are their dreams?

The new parents, the empty nesters, and the recently retired. The mom who slapped her son’s hands behind me in the line-up at the grocery store. The man standing at the traffic light every afternoon with the sign that says, “Hungry.” What are their dreams? What were their dreams?

Imagine if a ‘Someday’ video was created for the dream of each person we know and each person we pass or who passes by our window and imagine if we were able to view each of their dreams or were able to read the description of their dream in a thought bubble above their head.  

How might knowing each student’s dream change how a teacher teaches?

How might remembering that each person has a dream—some broken, some whole—change the ways we interact with and respond to and care for each other on the street corner, at the grocery store, in our congregations and everyday in our neighborhood?

I have a dream. What’s yours?