Of Dreams & Failure
It’s my first opinion piece of the new year, and I figured I would tackle the one thing that people hate talking about. Not politics, religion, or child-rearing, but dreams.
Yes, Dreams.
Think about it, we all have some wild or unorthodox dream we’ve only shared with a select few, if anyone at all. Why only a few? Why are we so ashamed of the lofty goal our brain and heart collaborated to create? And what does popular opinion have to do with our dreams? Are they any less valid if they’re any less common? No, of course they aren’t, we all know and have been taught as much throughout our lives, young and old alike. So then, why do we clam up when it comes to talk of our ideal selves and life situation? My opinion is this: if you don’t let people know what you’re trying to do, they’ll never be able to tell if you failed. If I told you I was trying to make $1 Billion this year, and came up $990,989,429 short, I’d be a bigger flop than Nelly’s last album. However, if I simply told you I wanted to make money, $10 mil is not a bad haul, and by no means a failure at the goal i outlined in our talks. The bar, no matter how high we may want to set for ourselves, is only truly set that high when we place it out for others to see. Humans and their nature are complex. We strive for independence, yet remain heavily dependent on the thoughts and opinions of others to sustain our thoughts and opinions of and about ourselves. Though we yearn to carve out our own path, leave an individual mark, and be remembered as one-of-a-kind, it’s nearly impossible to do without recognition. What would have Clint Eastwood have accomplished if no one saw his movies or nominated him for awards? If Michael Jordan dominated teams with no crowd or television audience, with no sneaker contract, who would he be? Surely their actual accomplishments would have been no less amazing, had they done the same things they’re known for. However, who could tell you? who could show you or describe? Who would sing their praises, harp on their flaws, propel them to legendary status in their respective fields? Nobody, almost nullifying the accomplishments altogether. Dreams work in the same way. No one dreams a dream that does not include some sort of recognition. Missionaries are recognized by God and the ones they help, athletes by fans, doctors by patients, veterinarians by pet families, trashmen by their neighborhoods. If the recognizers are removed from these, one does not exist, and the others at worst unnecessary, and at best trivial. Dreams are founded on recognition, without this, there are no dreams.
So, now that we’ve covered dreams, why are we so afraid of failing to realize them? Dreams are intangible, until accomplished, they exist only in our minds and hearts. So, by failing at them we lose only something we never actually gained, because it never existed in the first place. After losing it, all we are left with is the opportunity to craft a new dream in its place, or take another stab at an old one. So, what’s the loss? Do we attach our dreams to our own self-worth? Are we measuring ourselves against the grandeur and feasibility of our dreams? Is failing at our dreams failing at being a good person, a better person, or simply at being us, in our minds? And what then of success? Does it validate our place here, giving us a reason to take up space and hog up air? I’m not asking because I have somewhere I want to go after this, I’m asking because I’m genuinely unsure.
