Irish Lessons

1. The things you want to do are possible.
   
2. The people who do things you want to do are no different than you are. They are, or were, every bit as common and every day, and there was nothing outstanding our terribly different by simply looking at them. They were simply people who had ideas and a willingness to do number three.
3. You have to dedicate yourself to the thing you want. It won't just happen. This means working, searching, sacrificing.
4. It's possible to take your friends with you, provided they participate along side you in number three.

These thoughts came to me yesterday while I was working thinking about Trinity College. Trinity is a large and old college in Dublin. I talked briefly about the library with the 200,000 books and the marble busts. Trinity has an amazing history and list of people that have gone through it. Samuel Beckett taught there, James Joyce couldn't go there because he was protestant in a catholic's world, Oscar Wilde went there before coming to Colorado. Three in less than ten years.

This thought isn't entirely new to me either. Look at good friends C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. And if we want to stretch way back, there's a whole line that goes Socrates>Plato>Aristotle>Alexander the Great.

I suppose standing in the hall, or the Long Room as the library's called, I was struck to awe by how not only can you achieve something, but you can bring others with you.