In the age of algorithms, split tests, dashboards, and data-driven decision-making, marketers seem to have forgotten one of the most valuable skills we can develop:
Studying the music, movies, novels, and works of art that move us at profound emotional levels.
Consider Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio’s “I’m Flying” scene in Titanic, Mel Gibson’s “Freedom!” cry in Braveheart, John Mellencamp’s “Jack & Diane,” or Bob Dylan’s “Tangled Up in Blue.” These are the works of master storytellers, rich with meaning, symbolism, and emotional truth. By taking the time to sit with them, we can begin to unlock their secrets.
For me, one of those works has been Xavier Rudd’s “We Deserve to Dream.”
I discovered the song three or four years ago, and it still opens something every time I hear it, even after hundreds of listens.
The video adds another layer entirely. It opens with an Aboriginal Australian man dressed in a suit, carrying a briefcase, and wearing a face mask (the song was released during the height of COVID). Arriving by train from the city, he’s apparently coming home and leaving behind, at least temporarily, a stressful corporate life.
Xavier greets him with a huge hug and unmistakable joy, then drives his friend into the countryside, leaving him at a simple gate—perhaps the edge of a farm or ranch.
At that gate, the man removes his face mask and hangs it on the fencepost. Then he continues alone, walking down a dirt road.
He eventually arrives at a dilapidated, abandoned cabin. Inside, he finds a broken picture frame in the rubble. The photo shows a young Aboriginal boy—possibly himself—standing with his family. He picks it up, staring at it, obviously overcome with emotion as Xavier sings:
“We belong here and we deserve to dream.”
Time stops as he stares into blank space, reflecting into eternity. His entire life comes present at once: who he was, who he became, what he chased, what he lost. All at once, he’s overtaken by something primal and wild, coinciding precisely with Rudd repeating the word “Dream!” and the song moving uptempo.
In slow motion, the man breaks into a beautiful dance, spinning and twisting rhythmically, his suit clothes flopping around, as if possessed by a spirit he hasn’t felt since his childhood. Years of stress, spreadsheets, anxiety, and misplaced ambition fall away in an instant.
By the end of the video, he is barefoot and shirtless, washing his face in a creek, gathering wood and building a bonfire. The final scenes show him dancing around the fire in the moonlight as Xavier closes with the line:
“And I hope to meet you at the gates.
See that light shining on your face.”
I’ve probably heard Rudd sing that line a thousand times. But on a walk several days ago, it stopped me in my tracks.
The gate.
“Small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.” (Matthew 7:14)
Xavier isn’t hoping to meet his friend anywhere. He’s hoping to meet him at a place that most people miss. It’s at the gate that the man drops the mask. Not just the COVID mask, but the deeper one: the mask that helped him survive a world that demanded he become someone else. And what does he find beyond the gate? His true Self, which was lost and now remembered.
This is repentance in its original sense: not moral self-flagellation, but metanoia: a turning, a reorientation, a return.
If you watch the video, you’ll notice that the gate is simple, ordinary, and easy to miss. That’s exactly how the narrow gate works: you only recognize it after you’ve passed through.
And that slow-motion moment I described earlier—staring into blank space—that’s a moment outside of chronological time. The Bible has language for this too: kairos, not chronos. Not clock-time, but the fullness of time.
In kairos, the past, present, loss, longing, and truth all converge. That’s what we mean at TELL ME MORE when we describe our core value: BE HERE NOW. The goal is kairos, that flow state where we can access the full intelligence and creative force of life.
The man in his suit doesn’t decide to dance. He’s not performing or reclaiming something through effort. He’s taken.
Passing through the narrow gate doesn’t come from self-improvement or moral striving. Once fully realized, it lands like a tidal wave.
But it always begins with whisper. If you’re not listening, you might miss it. Rudd’s song opens with,
“Whisper in the wind took me home, I’d believed there was something more.”
Coming home isn’t really about coming home to a physical place, it’s coming home to who we truly are.
When the man sheds the suit and goes shirtless and barefoot, he’s not shedding evil, just something that’s no longer true.
And that hug from Xavier? It happened at the beginning. Because grace always precedes repentance. Xavier doesn’t scold or instruct his friend, he embraces him because he has returned to his true Self.
So, reader:
“I hope to meet you at the gates. See that light shining on your face.”