To dream the impossible dream
To fight the unbeatable foe
To bear with unbearable sorrow
To run where the brave dare not go

Those are the opening lyrics of the theme song to Man from la Mancha, the classic 1973 Don Quixote movie. Powerful stuff, right. Proof of its power is that the original book that inspired the song and movie was published in 1605 and 1615 in Spain. Amazing that its hold on us has lasted for over 400 years.

Don Quixote sort of trickled into our lives. It wasn’t a book that we read in English class, but then Kim found a list of classic literature that would give us Well-Educated Minds and the first book on the list was, you guessed it, Don Quixote. Kim read it slowly over the course of a year and now I’m just about through the first part. During this time, I attended a marketing class at a place called The Wizard Academy which has one of the largest collections of Don Quixote art around and a wedding chapel called Chapel Dulcinea. It is in the hill country outside of Austin, Texas and when you stand at the chapel and look down into the valley, you see a statue of Don Quixote looking up at his queen and lady.

And that’s only the start of us starting to see Don Quixote everywhere. I realized that one of my favorite music albums, Dulcinea by Toad the Wet Sprocket, has a song on it called Windmills and is an obvious reference that I never paid attention to. When we were at Magic Kingdom last year riding It’s a Small World with the girls, there was Don Quixote with Sancho attacking the windmills. On the way to buy Abby’s new violin a few weeks ago, Kim spotted a statue of the pair again. I was reading John Steinbeck’s ‘Travels with Charley,’ and Rocinante (Quixote’s trusted horse) is the name he gives the truck that he drove around the country in. Quixote references are everywhere.

To cap it off, last week we went to see the movie ‘The Man who Killed Don Quixote’ starring Adam Driver and Jonathan Pryce. It was produced by Terry Gilliam of Monty Python fame. It is a movie with a storied history. It has taken 25 years to get produced, with production mishaps and financial woes plaguing the film from its inception. Even once made, the film found controversy over its release and ended up only being shown on one night and at one time in American theaters. Very strange and not unlike the orginal story..

So. What is your impossible dream? What is your unbeatable foe? That’s why this story is still with us, isn’t it? We all relate to Don Quixote when we have an insurmountable problem, be it real or imaginary. We all have dreams that seem impossible, sorrows that seem unbearable, but if Don Quixote can attack windmills, fight hordes of soldiers and survive with nothing in the mountains, we just might be able to run where the brave dare not go. So, make this your time. Whatever it is that you’ve been putting off, do it. Don’t just dream it. Don Quixote shows us that there is so much more in a life of action. And if you need to put a bowl on your head and pretend that it is a fancy helmet, well, that’s ok too. Whatever you need to do to fight for your dreams.