Hot air balloons and childhood dreams

Ana here.

There is a book that, if you haven’t read yet, I strongly recommend you: ‘The Last Lecture‘, by Randy Pausch. Among other ideas, it says we should put lots of effort to make our childhood dreams come true, even the silliest ones. According to the author, that’s where our inner wishes live.
That’s why this picture—besides capturing one of our favorite places in Boston—also symbolizes one of these silly dreams coming true. And how happy could a few balloons make us?

When I was a child, hot air balloons were totally out of reach. Besides being uncommon in Brazil, they were out of the budget for a family that lived well but without room for extravagancies. Until one day, around May 1996, in a traditional fair in the city, when I got the desirable object as a gift. It was a balloon with the face of Mickey.

I went around the whole day with that balloon, as if it was a trophy. There wasn’t anything more beautiful or that could fly higher than it. I arrived home, tied carefully the balloon on a chair, and, during that whole week, I admired that special gift that, little by little, got flat and stopped flying.
The years went by and the story of the hot air balloon was forgotten in a corner of the memory.

Lessons from the road

I’m not sure if the wonder for flying balloons was a suggestion about what was to come, but when we started our trip, the balloons came to picture again. In North America, people can buy it in many stores, and it usually costs less than a coffee.

Since I’ve been finding balloons everywhere, that little girl from twenty years ago came back. Suddenly, I saw myself enchanted, once again, by the magic of the colorful spheres. This time, even if the budget is still low, I allowed myself this small extravagance.

Why am I telling you this? Just to remind you that, sometimes, happiness can live in ordinary colorful balloons. We just have to look back, to our simplest dreams and give space for them to come true again.

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Check the book: