Good morning Reader—
And welcome to the 23rd issue of The FAM.
here are countless beautiful things about being a child. The pure emotions, the simplicity, the resounding joy at the sight of a butterfly or a sweet little treat. But one of the most amazing things you see in children: Their unabashed ability to dream.
Wishes, big and small, all packaged in blown-out birthday candles and dandelion seeds floating in the breeze. You were that child. I was that child. We all were.
But somewhere along the way, most of us stop dreaming. Not because we’ve outgrown our dreams, but because life—in all its weight and responsibility—had quietly conspired to make us practical.
Our dreams get worn down by what I call the forces of erosion.
A job loss. A marriage ending. The phone call that changes everything. The loved one we couldn’t save. The numbers that don’t add up. All of these moments have immense gravity. And they stack and compound until they pull us down to earth.
Nietzsche named this the “Spirit of Gravity”—not just the literal heaviness of hard times, but the weight of everything the world tries to place on our shoulders. The traditions, the expectations, the quiet demands to conform and settle. It’s a force that drags us away from the sky of possibility and down into the soil of survival. Left unchecked, it doesn’t just ground us—it shrinks us. It presses on the soul until we forget we were made to rise.
And this leads us to what’s even more dangerous than the big life events: invisible forces—the long commutes, the late-night emails, the grocery lists, the endless cycles of helping others while neglecting ourselves. Bit by bit, the sparkle in that small child’s eyes dims and the dream dissolves in the noise while we step through life.
And then there’s the exhaustion we don’t talk about — the kind that comes from living at half capacity for too long. We numb ourselves with convenience and consumption. Two hours of scrolling, a few more of Netflix, one more drink to take the edge off. We tell ourselves we’re resting, but really, we’re retreating. And who actually wants to retreat from their dreams? The habits that once soothed us now drain us. And slowly, the light that once fueled us dims.
I’ve lived that retreat. Two years ago, I applied to the University of Pennsylvania’s Master of Applied Positive Psychology program. I saw it as the next step in my mission to empower one million people to rise from just getting by to living fully alive.
When I got the rejection letter, I almost brushed it off. Sure, it stung—but I didn’t let the sting show. I did what I’ve always done: accepted it, stayed composed, moved on.
But that quiet acceptance? It was like a subtle clearing of the deck. Not just a “no” to one opportunity—but a sharp dismissal of the entire dream. Without even realizing it, I stopped talking about our vision to empower one million people. I stopped dreaming. I didn’t drift—hell, I got really busy being busy. Meetings, projects, tasks, all under the noble banner of productivity. But the truth is, I was working for today instead of reaching toward tomorrow. I become solely and utterly practical.
To me, that letter didn’t just say “not now”—for a while, it took the dream right out of me. Thank God I realized it. Because when we forget the dream, we don’t just lose direction—we lose ourselves.
And that’s how it happens, isn’t it? Not in one dramatic moment, but in a slow forgetting.
We trade wonder for productivity. Vision for comfort. Imagination for routine.
And before we know it, we wake up one morning and realize we’ve stopped dreaming the dream.
Wonder as the Soil of Dreaming
If the forces of erosion wear down our dreams, wonder is what restores them. That same wonder that sparkles in children constructing a castle of pillows and blankets, telling stories of tree-climbing adventures, and sharing dreams of going to space, training tigers, and saving the day.
Aristotle once said, “All men by nature desire to know.” That desire begins not with answers, but with wonder—with what the ancient Greeks called thauma—the astonishment that draws us into curiosity, meaning, and eventually, wisdom. In that sense, wonder isn’t just a feeling. It’s the first way we ever related to the world. It’s how we began.
Wonder is not a fleeting feeling—it is the original posture of the human spirit. It is where the soul begins to breathe again. It’s not distraction or escape—it’s a return to aliveness.
The ancient philosophers understood this. Aristotle said that philosophy begins in thaumazein—in awe, in astonishment. Because before we can know, we must first be moved.
Athens John—a dear friend, mentor, and fellow seeker who shares my love of ancient wisdom— and I often talk about this idea: that wonder is not childish; it’s sacred. It’s the starting point of all wisdom because it reawakens our relationship with life itself.
Without wonder, we become efficient but small. We know how to manage, but not how to marvel. We become experts at doing, but amateurs at being. And in that state, our imagination collapses—not because we lack ambition, but because we’ve lost touch with the mystery that makes ambition meaningful. We trade mystery for mastery—and when everything can be explained, nothing feels sacred.
That’s why, every morning when I journal, I remind myself to be wonder-filled. It’s my way of remembering that the world is still unfolding, that possibility is still alive, and that my dream—the one I thought I’d lost—still lives inside me.
Wonder Right Before Your Eyes
Some scenes you think you’ve seen a hundred times—until one day, you see them differently. That happened in Monroe Township, New Jersey. I was walking through a distribution center while filming an episode of We Supply America.
On the surface, it was a scene I’d seen hundreds of times—racks of inventory, the hum of machinery, the steady rhythm of work. But that day, something shifted. I stopped and really saw it: robots picking products, conveyors carrying them to packers, boxes being sealed and shipped across the country—all so someone, somewhere, could find what they needed, exactly when they needed it, on a store shelf.
I was awestruck. Crazy, I know! I’ve walked hundreds of warehouse and distribution floors. But this day. This moment. My eyes… and my heart and soul saw something that touched me deeply.
It was a miracle hiding in plain sight. And in that moment, I felt it again—wonder. Not for the technology, but for the human ingenuity behind it. The ordinary became extraordinary simply because I chose to see it.
When we stop being curious, when we stop being amazed, the dream withers. But when we choose wonder, the world opens up again.
Wonder isn’t an escape from reality; it’s an invitation back into it. It’s the courage to see ordinary life as extraordinary again—to walk outside and feel awe at the way the light hits the trees, to listen deeply to someone’s story and realize how rare connection really is, to look at your own reflection and whisper, “There’s still more of me to discover.”
The truth is, you can’t dream the dream again until you rediscover your capacity for wonder. Because wonder is the soil from which every new vision grows. It softens what’s hardened, loosens what’s stuck, and makes the imagination fertile again. When we recover our sense of wonder, we recover our capacity to dream the dream again.
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