Week Thirteen – Keep on dreaming!

I often say to people “Dreams are our realities of tomorrow” because dreaming is just another way of visualising the future!

Last we I talked about the importance of never giving up and somehow it seems that people made a connection to never giving up on our dreams. A friend of mine after reading my blog wrote to me “I feel it is the moment to move on and try to make my dreams come true :-)” and I began to think what she was trying to say with this. Throughout the years people have been saying “dreams come true” and we all grow up believing this. Our early childhood memories remind us of how we were influenced by the magic of creators like Walt Disney, who still influencing millions of children around the world in believing that dreams can come true.

This magic somehow starts to fade away by realities of life as we grow and move away from being children who enjoy the concept of a Magical World full of dreams to then become teenagers struggling for survival and a place in society where there is no room for dreamers. We move even further away from our dreams when we go to college or University and we start to face the difficulties of adulthood. And then reality hits, we have to find a job, earn money and sooner or latter we join the cycle of society in a job that pays the rent and gives us a bit of extra cash to have a drink. I guess is what you may call “the circle of life” and we struggle to survive in it.

So how did we go from chasing dreams to chasing busses to get to work? Where did it all go wrong for the majority of us? Why did we stop believing that dreams can come true? Why are our realities of today nothing to do with our dreams of yesterday?

I took this idea of “dreams can come true” and spend the next few days observing people (my favourite pastime). After reading my friends comment I began to look for clues as to why people believe that dreams can come true or anyone “living the dream”. I began looking at my own family; my son wants to be a Basketball player. This is his dream! He spends most of his time thinking about being a Basketball player. You may recall in an earlier blog I described how he imagined the O2 Arena in London being a huge Basketball court and he saw himself playing there. He is a good example of how someone young “dreams” of his future. And this to me is clear evidence that dreams are just the realities of our future.

However, for dreams to turn into reality we must work hard to make them come true. I guess this is the part that Walt Disney didn’t share with us; this is the part that many of us will face and will stop us from making our dreams come true. So in order to make sure my son becomes a Basketball Player, he must work hard to make this happen. Now if you don’t live in the US and instead you reside in a small seaside town in the UK, you are going to struggle to find a basketball club! This is the first obstacle he needs to face in his path to achieve his dream. We did find one and finally I took him last weekend for a trial. It is going to be hard work as Basketball is not a popular sport in England and it will be harder to get there. So he needs to focus to make sure this “hard work” does not stop him from making that future reality coming true.

Like my son, I came across other examples. My daughter wants to be a signer, and unlike her brother, being a singer is more accessible than Basketball! However, just like every other dream, there is “hard work” here too! There is tremendous competition in this profession, which can push someone to giving up on his or her dream. She must work hard too in order to compete against thousands of excellent singers out there; she needs to want it more than someone else.

And even as adults we need to work hard to make our dreams come true. My wife has just completed an introduction course in design. She loves decorating houses and for years has been practising with our homes! She has a dream, a reality she can make true, but again, it will be hard work, some of which she has already experienced in the last 10 weeks! As she attended her class she remained a full time mother (with a husband who travels all the time) a part time worker and taxi service for the kids! But she did it! She began to make that dream come true.

Throughout the week I also came across people talking about dreams not coming true, things they want to achieve but couldn’t; realities that seem so far away. And the more I looked the more I saw many of us not only give up on our dreams but stop believing that they could come true!

I have always dreamed of being a writer, ever since I was a kid. I also wanted to be an actor, singer, dancer, you name it, I wanted to be them all! I had some many dreams I think this is why I was so bad at school; I could not deal with my reality back then which was contradicting my dreams of one day being in the world of the performing arts. And it is not just light headed young kids like me with dreams of fame who have a conflict with their present realities, it is anyone’s dreams of either being rich, powerful, famous or just simply a great scientist, doctor or lawyer, any dream that fits our personality and desires is a dream we want to make true, and a reality we need to fight for. I don’t get worried if my kid is not good at school, for me it is more important that he or she has a dream, has formulated a future reality they want to live, it is then our job as parents to support that young mind to shape his or her future with what they dream of today.

It doesn’t matter how old you are, at 47 years of age I still have dreams, and every day that goes by I work hard to make those dreams my reality of tomorrow.

The key is never to give up and not to be frightened of failure, keep going, work hard, remember this is where it breaks down, and one day, for sure, your dream will come true!