Growing up I watched the Oscars for the glamour and beauty. Now I watch for something else entirely: the persistence behind the dream.
Growing up, I watched the Oscars every year with my mother and begged to stay up long past bedtime to see the final awards announced. Back then I watched for the glamour and beauty. The night felt magical: the shimmering gowns, the music swelling in the theater, the luminous faces stepping onto that stage. It all seemed like the ultimate moment of arrival, proof that someone had made it to the very top.
Now when I watch, I admire something very different.
What moves me most is the persistence behind it. I think about the decades of effort that came before that brief walk to the podium: the seasons when the work went unnoticed, the failures, the near misses, the quiet disappointments, and the stubborn decision to keep going even when there was no evidence the dream would lead anywhere. That is what the Oscars represent to me now.
Not simply success.
But endurance.
If you listen carefully to acceptance speeches, that is often what you hear beneath the gratitude. People are trying, in just a few minutes, to acknowledge the long road that brought them there. Michael B. Jordan captured it in six words: “Thank you for betting on me.”
Such a short sentence, but it contains an entire journey. Every meaningful pursuit depends on someone who believes in you before success is obvious. Sometimes that person is a mentor, a parent, a teacher, or a friend. My high school journalism teacher believed in me and changed my life. And sometimes the person who has to keep betting on you the longest is yourself.
Most dreams begin quietly. Composer Ludwig Göransson once traced his journey back to childhood, recalling that his father placed a guitar in his arms when he was seven years old. Not with recognition or applause, but with a small spark of curiosity that slowly grows over time. Then life intervenes. Reality enters. The dream has to survive doubt, rejection, comparison, and time itself. That is why the most powerful speeches are rarely about the award. They are about the road that led there.
A few years ago, my daughter and son-in-law gave me a Mother’s Day gift that unexpectedly touched that childhood dream. They took me to the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, where visitors can stand on a stage and deliver a simulated Oscar acceptance speech before a filmed virtual audience. It was meant to be fun, a lighthearted afternoon outing. But when I stood on that stage and clutched an Oscar statue, something in me opened unexpectedly.
I cried.
I had not expected that reaction. But standing there awakened the child who once watched the Oscars with her mother and believed in possibilities. It was the symbolism of it, the feeling of being seen, of imagining that your work might matter enough to be recognized. I had not realized how much I was still carrying that little girl’s dream until that moment made it visible.
I was honored last year to be named a recipient of the James Patterson “Go Finish Your Book” grant. Not an Oscar. Not Hollywood. Not that stage. But it touched the same place in me and reminded me of something I think many of us need to hear: dreams do not always arrive in the form we first imagined. Sometimes they find us through a different door.
I think about how many people quietly set aside a dream not because they chose to abandon it, but because life accumulated. Responsibilities multiplied. The years passed. Somewhere along the way, the voice that said keep going became harder to hear.
Dreams rarely disappear all at once. More often they fade slowly, worn down by doubt or the fear that it may simply be too late. I never would have imagined that in my sixties I would be a full-time writer fortunate enough to publish essays in national outlets.
The people standing on that Oscar stage refused to quit during the long stretches when nothing seemed to be happening. They kept working through the in-between years when the dream offered very little in return.
Not every dream ends with applause. Not every life’s work is publicly recognized. But sometimes the real triumph is simpler than that. It is that you stayed with it. That you kept showing up for something you believed in, long after it would have been easier to walk away.
What looks from the outside like one shining moment is almost always the result of years of quietly refusing to give up. And maybe that is what is truly worth celebrating, not only the people who make it onto the stage, but everyone who continues to show up for the work, even when no one is watching.