The Difficulty of Dreaming
I write speeches in MOE. I paint wonderful pictures of what life would be like if we get our education system right; if our teachers put their hearts and souls to nurturing their students, the only limit to their lives is how big their dreams are. I write that students, if things were done right to them, would be seized with the joy of life, and would live their dreams out passionately.
But it is a really difficult thing to dream once you’re out of school. In school, we dream many things of we want to be; and our teachers (the good ones, at least) religiously build up our self-confidence to (dare I say) “dare to dream”. It’s a good feeling; dreaming of which college you want to go to. And then when you’re in your “dream college”, dreaming of the possibilities before you – working in a big job, traveling the world, making a difference.
Something happens after graduation that seems to rob us of the power to dream. Some people call it maturity; others call it disillusionment. But it sets in for most people. I look back to my school and college days – the dreams I had; the dreams I knew people had. And I look at the present. Our dreams would be ashamed of us.
Why is it so hard to dream? I suppose there’s just so much to lose; to be different. There’s a certain expectation of how life should turn out; and we live such timid lives within those well-defined parameters. True, we still dream sometimes – earthly, material, short-sighted ones. “Oh! Life would be so perfect if I get my hands on the iPod nano!”, or “Oh! It would be so perfect if we could spend December in Bali”. We’re such fools to believe we would be complete if only we had those petty dreams.
What happened to the big dreams? The dreams of making a difference, or being who we are, and proud of it?
It hits us all eventually. Some when they wallow in mid (or quarter)-life crises. Others when they have lost everything they thought mattered, or when the veil of superficiality is lifted for them to see their petty dreams in all their vain glory. We come face to face again with the student we had left behind when we graduated – the beaming, happy, expectant face of youth untainted by the grind of daily conforming.
Perhaps we should not just equip our young with the confidence to dream, but to teach them the importance of persevering even when those dreams fade in the harsh reality of the workplace. We should teach them to write their dreams down daily, and keep asking honest questions whenever their life-paths start deviating – if they have changed their dreams and passions, that’s still fine; but if they have lost it, our gentle voices should come echoing, like sirens calling sailors, not to their deaths, but to come back to being true to themselves, instead of being true to the world.
But it is a really difficult thing to dream once you’re out of school. In school, we dream many things of we want to be; and our teachers (the good ones, at least) religiously build up our self-confidence to (dare I say) “dare to dream”. It’s a good feeling; dreaming of which college you want to go to. And then when you’re in your “dream college”, dreaming of the possibilities before you – working in a big job, traveling the world, making a difference.
Something happens after graduation that seems to rob us of the power to dream. Some people call it maturity; others call it disillusionment. But it sets in for most people. I look back to my school and college days – the dreams I had; the dreams I knew people had. And I look at the present. Our dreams would be ashamed of us.
Why is it so hard to dream? I suppose there’s just so much to lose; to be different. There’s a certain expectation of how life should turn out; and we live such timid lives within those well-defined parameters. True, we still dream sometimes – earthly, material, short-sighted ones. “Oh! Life would be so perfect if I get my hands on the iPod nano!”, or “Oh! It would be so perfect if we could spend December in Bali”. We’re such fools to believe we would be complete if only we had those petty dreams.
What happened to the big dreams? The dreams of making a difference, or being who we are, and proud of it?
It hits us all eventually. Some when they wallow in mid (or quarter)-life crises. Others when they have lost everything they thought mattered, or when the veil of superficiality is lifted for them to see their petty dreams in all their vain glory. We come face to face again with the student we had left behind when we graduated – the beaming, happy, expectant face of youth untainted by the grind of daily conforming.
Perhaps we should not just equip our young with the confidence to dream, but to teach them the importance of persevering even when those dreams fade in the harsh reality of the workplace. We should teach them to write their dreams down daily, and keep asking honest questions whenever their life-paths start deviating – if they have changed their dreams and passions, that’s still fine; but if they have lost it, our gentle voices should come echoing, like sirens calling sailors, not to their deaths, but to come back to being true to themselves, instead of being true to the world.
4 Comments:
you know the funny thing?i think the dreams i dream as an adult today are far bigger and grander and sweeter than those I dreamt of as a teenager. I think tis not age but Christ that makes all the difference.
He taught me to dream of the poetic, the eternal where I was content to dream of the prosaic and the temporal. :)
I hope you are still dreaming big dreams this day Bim - for yourself, for your young family, for all that He has given you. Glad you are still pushing the big dream envelope in the Ministry of Ed. Us teachers in the first line of fire are pushing it at the ground. Believe it. :)
I remember how we were as 18-year-olds... I can't remember our conversations, but I remember we once saw a shooting star together while wandering the deserted NUS grounds late at night.
The moment seemed to encapsulate the strange, silly headiness of youth. We dreamed of which university we'd go to, which course we'd study, where in the big wide world our dreams would take us. We dreamed of being writers in some form or other, of falling in love and finding the mythic ONE out there... of course we also had angst too, can't remember what of, it all seems so distant now.
Yes we have forgotten how to dream. We've become older than we actually are. Our minds seem to have shrunk to thinking within circumscribed norms, which shouldn't be the case cos we have an all-powerful Dreammaker on our side now.
There's another way of looking at it though: we fail to see that we ARE living out some of those dreams we had not so long ago. Do dreams turn stale and mouldy when they become reality I wonder? Well we mustn't let that happen, mustn't lose the ability to step back and marvel.
Thanks both for sharing your thoughts. I do know that our Maker is here; he not only made us, but makes us, and shapes our dreams -- if only we let him and stop kicking and fussing like a newborn. But still, he gave us talents to use and to bless temporally, even as we dwell in the (gasp) now but not yet. Where do we use their talents? Wholeheartedly only in his service? I guess, but then JC was a carpenter for a good part of his life. He did use his God-given hands to enjoy making that table or chair. What about us? What has God given us? And What have we used those things for?
OC (or CO), yes! that strange night with KYap and Bliss(?) and a coupla others sneaking out from NUS through the labyrinth of drains. Yes, that shooting star was rather odd. And yes, I don't remember the conversations either, but I too remembered the pregnant mood -- as if we were watching our lives unfold before us, holding our breaths as we gaze preicipitiously over the cliff of the present. That wild beating of the heart, expecting something great to come along. Now, all we crave is a little comfort of the home, some time to rest and sleep; and the quiet satisfaction that things haven't gone that bad.
Will go hunt out those dreams from under the bed; and make new ones as the days of our lives count themselves down to eternity.
Yeah... still not too late to be a historian on a subject that could "make a difference"... how about a part-time PhD?
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