LIVING YOUR DREAM

“If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with success unexpected in common hours.”

These words written by the renowned American historian, essayist, poet and philosopher Henry David Thoreau, reflect a life spent in confrontation of the prevailing norms of society. He was a lifelong abolitionist and environmentalist whose ideas on civil disobedience influenced such notable leaders as Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King, Jr. Thoreau was the consummate dreamer, always searching for a cause to support and doing so with confidence and vigor.

We are all, to a greater or lesser extent, dreamers, but yet unfortunately very few of us have acquired the courage and conviction necessary to follow our dreams to fruition. We would rather prefer to spend our time focusing on our limitations or making excuses for why we cannot be the people we would like to be. We are content to sit back and spend our time in the useless pass time of admiring or copying those who have succeeded, or envying their success, or even worse, criticizing and vilifying them. We have no difficulty to convince ourselves that following our dream is unrealistic, impractical; and totally far-fetched. We argue that such a life is reserved for few select people who are different and specially endowed, but for the rest of humanity it is unrealistic to expect it.

Most of the blame for this unfortunate situation can be laid on society’s attitude to its members. In its desire to maintain order and conformity and to ensure predictable activity, society frowns on anyone or any idea that might be different and unpredictable. From very early in life, children are taught to follow rules and are punished if they do not. We insist on maintaining uniformity and spend all our lives living by rules laid down by others. This approach has its benefits. It ensures that the majority will receive fair and equitable opportunity and that no one is left without a chance. But unfortunately it does not encourage the individual to search out and to break the rules, and certainly frowns on the individual who is willing to follow his inner spirit and find out that he does indeed have the power to create new directions. Throughout history of man’s existence in this world he has yet to accept the fact that he continues to be guilty of failing to accept what Walt Disney found out on his own, that:

“All our dreams will come true,

if we have the courage to pursue them.”

The truth is that it takes a special person with special attitudes to rise above the accepted level of mediocrity, and with a special vision and an unyielding determination to succeed against all odds. And indeed there has been no shortage of these people throughout the history of the world. In fact, the world itself has been molded into its present state not by the efforts of the masses of mediocrity but by the strength of the few special people who chose to follow their dreams with courage and conviction. The names of many of these people are indelibly recorded in history books of the world, but by far the majority remains unrecorded and unrecognized. They come from every sphere of human activity and every age and sex. They all possessed certain common characteristics that distinguished them from the rest; A commitment to follow their dream for change, a belief in their ability to succeed, courage to follow through failure and resistance and an imagination that has no boundaries.