Dreams…!
Not So long ago I was in School, One day in school there was a special class called “Personality Development” which all of us attended thinking it had to be something with exercise or martial arts, I know it is dumb but we were in school where we thought personality was our body or how we look. When we entered the class, there were no dumbbells or teacher wearing a karate costume. We were confused and asked each other meaning of personality development. The teacher made all of us sit down and she told us to relax and asked each one of us the same question. The question was “What are your Dreams”? We were all startled not because we had no dreams but because we were not used to telling our dreams to whole class and sharing it with the World. But that day each one of us told their dreams to the whole class. Everyone’s dreams were unique and different. There were lots of dreams in that class that day, Lots of Pilots, Astronauts, Sports Stars, Movie Stars, Air Hostess and also one girl wanted to be Miss World. Almost 10 years later I met that “class of dreams” again hoping to see all their dreams fulfilled or in pursuit of fulfillment.
But to my shock not a single one had followed their dreams including me. They were all either Software Engineers, Insurance Agents, Marketing Executive, Tech Support or some one trying to pursue Higher Education Abroad but what I couldn’t find was a Pilot or an Astronaut or Sports and Movie stars. I said to myself, just to make myself happy that times had changed, World had moved on in a decade. But wait…NASA never stopped hiring astronauts, countries didn’t stop using planes or going to War or people didn’t stop watching Movies and Sports. So what happened to our dreams which we cherished, which we wanted to be fulfilled. Maybe we all let go of our dreams just to take a safer path which was easier than following our dreams. Then I asked myself what stopped me from following my dreams the only answer I got was I felt safe with the crowd just like how sheep’s feel safe with the herd and they always follow the shepherd without exploring anything new or making their existence worthwhile. Maybe we all are a bunch of sheep’s trying to follow the shepherd, who we know at the end is going to trade us to the butcher for a reasonable amount. When we know we will be sold later to the butcher by the shepherd why do we still follow him, it is our own mindset which says it is better to be in a group and be a follower than to be the leader who is not afraid of risk and adventures. Well as I see, we all have potential to do something great, it is just that we can’t overcome the fear of losing and hence we never win. We were not born in this World to get educated for 25-30 years of our life and then work for a Corporation with 80,000 strong workforces where “we are the 79,990th most important employee in the Corporation”. “We are better than that!”
Instead of being in the rat-race, we should all stop for a second and think where we are going. Is it really worth sacrificing the dreams we had for building someone else’s dreams (when we work for Microsoft, we are helping Bill Gates build his dream of “Windows on every desktop”, When we work for facebook, we are helping build Zuckerberg’s dream of connecting the world’s population online). We only have a life and it is very short. Life is meant to lived, take risks, don’t be afraid of adventures, and don’t be afraid to FAIL. Not everyone is lucky enough to FAIL. If you have failed, that means you have tried and trying is very important. If you don’t try, you can’t win.
This is an excerpt from Steve Jobs Stanford Speech which I love “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”
I want to end this article with a beautiful quote “Everybody’s Unique in this World, Only if we live up that Uniqueness”.
