I've been thinking about dreams a lot lately, not the ones that occur during r.e.m. sleep, the ones we build up in our hearts, souls, and mind's eyes. I have some big dreams, as I'm sure many of you do. My question is this; can your dreams be too big? I mean, is the man of my dreams out of my reach? Should I aim lower? I would love to be a published author, children's books and poetry. Is that too lofty of a dream? I mean, I can publish my own book, but will anyone read it? My goal is not to make a lot of money, but to be read, to affect someone the way Maya Angelou, Ntozake Shange, Langston Hughes and so many others have affected me. Of course, I have 3 blogs and five followers between them so I'm not sure how many people would read an entire book of my work. At any rate, as a person whose job it is to nurture and help realize the dreams of youth, I really want to get a handle on this question. Now, are all of our dreams possible only if we follow a particular path? Are we more likely to achieve them if we strive for them by a certain age and then the odds dwindle? What are the barriers that keep us from fulfilling our dreams and how, if at all, do we remove them? This is why I would like to have more followers who comment on my blogs so there can be discussion and so I can get some help sorting these things out. Ok, so let's start with the first question, must we follow a particular path. Well, I suppose for some professions like a doctor or lawyer one would need to follow the correct educational path. But then that brings in the third question, what if there are barriers to prevent you from taking that path, like money? There have been many who went back to school later in life and became doctors and lawyers, so the age question seems flexible.
Let's go back to barriers. There are so many barriers to us fulfilling our dreams, not the least of which is ourselves. We doubt ourselves, listen to others' negative talk, hormones take our minds away from our dreams and send us down another path. Working with youth I see where it starts. Youth in low income and high crime areas lack hope. They lack hope because their parents and their grandparents lack hope. They are stuck in cyclical poverty and don't see a way out. One child told me he wanted to be a security guard when he grew up. There's nothing wrong with that, it's just that fifth graders usually have much bigger dreams and ideas about what they want their lives to be like. Dreaming has always been looked upon as a child's activity. So poverty is a barrier. I would say also that the school systems in these areas are creating barriers for these children by not properly preparing them. How much encouragement is necessary for ones to meet their dreams? I've seen people do extraordinary things though everyone told them they couldn't. Conversely, I have seen great works come from those who credit the support and encouragement of parents, teachers, coaches and so forth for their successes.
Now, age. In his mid-50s Taikichiro Mori founded the business that made him, for a year or two, the richest man in the world. Al Jarreau didn't release his first album until he was 35. Clint Eastwood didn't direct his first film until he was 41. (He was 62 when he won the Best Director Oscar for "Unforgiven" and 74 when he won it for "Million Dollar Baby.") The human brain doesn't even stop developing until age 25 (the part that controls judgement takes the longest to develop, surprise surprise). So, I think it could be an advantage to pursue some of our dreams later in life.
So what does this all mean? What's the answer? I've been thinking about this for a week, but I didn't write about it because I didn't have an answer that satisfied me, until yesterday. Rev. Run (of Run DMC) tweeted this: "God gives us dreams several sizes too big so that we can grow into them." I love that because I am definitely still growing, and dreaming.
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