When you were a child, do you remember that time, when you felt so excited about something, you might just burst? I called this wonderful feeling, a “book of dreams moment.”

Contest chair, fellow Toastmasters, honor dignitaries, and every dreamer here. When I was a young child, mom and dad realized something was different about me. I was odd, strange, not quite what they expected. When they finally diagnosed my ailment, my disease, they were deeply worried, even embarrassed. You see, I am a geek, and worse yet I'm a science geek.

Now my dad expected a manly-man, a version 2 of himself. But here I was geek through and through. In my days, we had no popular geek role models. There was no Bill Gates, no Steve Jobs, not even a Steve Urkel. But to give dad credit, he actually embraced my geeky love of math and science. “Work hard, dream big, son”. He often said.

One such day as dad was passing by our local library, he noticed out in front were tables set up. On those tables were piles and piles of books. In the yard was a giant for sale sign. “Curious,” dad thought, “libraries don't sell books!” Yet these were unwanted books, that no one had checked out in ages. Since our family was poor, and dad seldom passed up a bargain, he rummaged through those piles until he discovered a very special book. He paid just 50¢ for it, brought that book home, and presented it to me. Its title was Let's Read About Stars.

I consumed that book. I read it cover to cover a million times over, until I had every statistic in that book memorized. Within those pages, this science geek became hooked on astronomy for life. That book I now call my “book of dreams”, and that euphoric sensation I felt was my very first “book of dreams moment”. Oh, there would be others. But that one was special.

What is your book of dreams? Oh, it may not be a real book, but we all do have one, I promise. It is our purpose, and when we fervently pursue that purpose, I believe those book of dreams moments are no longer rare, but frequent, like that childhood sensation when you felt so excited you might just burst.

Dad and I both worked very hard researching and saving to buy my first telescope. But I never imagined how difficult, even frustrating it was trying to find Saturn or the ring nebula or the Andromeda Galaxy through that telescope. It felt like searching an entire beach for one tiny specific grain of sand. “Keep at it son, you'll find it,” Dad would encourage. Finally, the reward would come, and upon seeing my first, breathtaking view of Saturn and its magnificent system of rings, I experienced yet another “book of dreams moment.”

By the time I was 20 years old, astronomy had blossomed into a lifetime ambition to build my own astronomical observatory with a real rotating dome, housing a large telescope. After years of planning, building, frequent setbacks, and many of dads “Work hard dream big son,” finally my big dream really did come true. As we hoisted that spherical dome onto the observatory base, I experienced yet another book of dreams moment.

The observatory has now become a spaceship of exploration for me. Within it I have traveled to the moon, to every planet, to comets, nebulae, star clusters, to galaxies, even to quasars halfway to the edge of the known universe. On those journeys, I now experience “book of dreams moments” regularly. They have inspired me to want to travel even deeper into space. I needed a bigger telescope, I realized, another dream come true. The same design as the Hubble Space Telescope, minus the flaw, of course, sorry NASA!.

The night before installing the new telescope into the observatory, I met Mom and Dad at our favorite Chinese restaurant. We were all so excited anticipating the events of the next day that would finally fulfill my life dream. At the end of that meal, I opened my fortune cookie, and gasped in amazement at its message. Choking back tears, I read it to Mom and Dad. It said “Through hard work and great effort, precious dream comes true”.

In that moment I just had to ask dad, “Did you ever imagine that old, discounted library book you bought me all those many years ago would cause my dream to come true?” “No”, he answered thoughtfully, “and I never imagined that tiny fifty cents would later cost me hundreds of dollars helping you buy telescopes and eyepieces!” “But seriously my son,” dad said, “all I ever really wanted from my little science geek, was for you to be encouraged, inspired, and love life.” We all experienced a book of dreams moment that evening.

Within a year, I received a NASA Picture of the Day accolade for photographing a unique cluster of galaxies 10s of millions of light years away. I continue to enjoy nights at the observatory witnessing the quiet majestic wonders of our cosmos moment by moment by “book of dreams moment”.

Nearly five decades ago, my dad made a tiny fifty-cent investment in me that really did reap rewards of truly astronomical proportions. Fifty cents for a discarded title but then became my book of dreams; fifty cents! Even now after all these many, many years later, believe it or not, I still have the book.

Whatever your purpose is, it is your book of dreams. I believe when we allow those book of dreams moments, to be our guide, through hard work and great effort our big dreams really can come true. And now, with all your heart and passion, I implore you, never let go, of your Book of Dreams.