Everyone has dreams: dreams to become great, dreams to change their circumstances. Personally? I want to change the world.

My name is Chase Akers. I am 15 years old and I live in Nashville. I was born three months early, and diagnosed with a condition called cerebral palsy. Throughout my early childhood, I struggled with activities as basic as walking. I fell down all the time and sports were never an option due to the lack of strength and balance in my legs. As you can imagine, being a kid with CP is far from easy. A few years later, the decision was made for me to have 8 surgeries on my legs to help re-strengthen the muscles. After the surgeries, I had to learn to walk all over again. It was discouraging but I was lucky. I had people around me saying I could do anything. The funny thing was that I actually believed them.

We hear the phrase “Dream Big” all the time. Not long ago, I started to look at the world through that simple phrase but it felt like something was missing. I started to think, instead of dreaming “big”, why not dream “bigger”? I have grown up learning that I need to think in a bigger way and to look past my own circumstances. Why not? I have nothing to lose. So, it came to me that I need to begin to dream bigger; bigger than what my circumstances are at the moment - bigger than what’s logical.

When I first heard about this project, Freehand, I was not sure what I would write. Summing up myself and everything I care about into one phrase seemed like a massive task. If I had one chance, one phrase to tell the world, one sentence to make my voice heard what would it be? Actually it’s simple. Dream bigger. I have always believed that we are only as great and as influential as we think we are. I want to change this world that we live in. So, I don’t simply want to dream - I want to dream bigger.

Chase’s Freehand says, “Dream Bigger.”