By: Henrylito D. Tacio
Published in its print edition on September 14 – 20, 2024
All our dreams can come true – if we have the courage to pursue them.” – Walt Disney
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“Dream the dreams that have never been dreamt,” urged Welsh actor David Bower. And don’t allow that dream to go into oblivion. If other people have reached their dreams, surely you can too. American poet and columnist Langston Hughes reminded, “Hold fast to dreams for if dreams die, life is a broken winged bird that cannot fly.”
When we were young, we had dreams and expectations. We imagine things. We keep thinking about what we want to be, what we want to do, what makes us proud and happy, and what we will become. “Dream lofty dreams, and as you dream, so you shall become,” British philosophical writer James Allen said. “Your vision is the promise of what you shall one day be and your ideal is the prophecy of what you shall at last unveil.”
But things seemed to have their own way when we grew up. We accept our successes or failures and we move on. The rapid change, the need to do the urgent things, the work, the pressures and the failures, all kill part of our visions.
American clergyman and author Phillips Brooks reminded, “The ideal life is in our blood and never will be still. Sad will be the day for any man when he becomes contented with the thoughts he is thinking and the deeds he is doing – where there is not forever beating at the doors of his soul some great desire to do something larger, which he knows that he was meant and made to do.”
Yes, things may have changed (we become older and wiser; others got married while a few remained single), but these changes cannot really take away our dreams. “When you cease to dream, you cease to live,” commented American publishing executive Malcolm S. Forbes.
At one time, a highly successful businessman was once asked. “How have you done so much in your lifetime?” the reporter inquired. This was his reply: “I have dreamed. I have turned my mind loose to imagine what I wanted to do. Then I went to bed and thought about my dreams. In the night I dreamt about my dreams. And when I awoke in the morning, I saw the way to make my dreams real. While other people were saying, ‘You can’t do that, it isn’t possible,’ I was well on my way to achieving what I wanted.’”
Remember what Nobel Peace Prize winner Woodrow Wilson said before? “We grow great by dreams. All big men are dreamers,” said the 28th American president. Pulitzer prize-winning author Pearl S. Buck also said, “There are many ways of breaking a heart. Stories were full of hearts being broken by love, but what really broke a heart was taking away its dream – whatever that dream might be.”
“When a dream takes hold of you, what can you do?” asked Patch Adams, an American physician whose life was made into a movie. “You can run with it, let it run your life, or let it go and think for the rest of your life about what might have been.”
If along the way, you have a hard time making your dream come true, try again and again. Believe in yourself and what you can do. A little boy walked into a large firm one day and asked for a job. He was so small, the owner was amused. “What is your motto, my son?” he asked. “The same as yours,” was the brisk reply.
The owner was puzzled. “What is that?” he asked again. “Why?” the boy answered, “the motto you have on the door there – it said PUSH!” The boy got the job.
Yes, never give up what you have already started. As one poet puts it, “When care is pressing you down a bit, rest if you must, but don’t you quit. Life is queer with its twists and turns, as every one of us sometimes learns, and many a failure turns about when he might have won had he stuck it out.”
Dreaming is not only for the children, but for the old folks as well. Whatever our age is, we still have to dream on, to visualize our desires, our wants, our vision of our future, even when we are considered too old for such things. Colonel Sanders started his business when he was sixty, and started the whole successful KFC business. The main thing is not the age — whether being too old, or too young, but it is the desire to dream on, and the courage to realize it.
Do you still remember the theme song of the movie, The Man from La Mancha? The two paragraphs went like this: “To dream the impossible dream, to fight the unbeatable foe, to bear with unbearable sorrow, to run where the brave dare not go. To right the unrightable wrong, to love pure and chaste from afar, to try when your arms are too weary, to reach the unreachable star.”
Star reminds me of the movie, Bituing Walang Ningning. The protagonist dreams of becoming like her idol one day. But she was told, “You’re nothing but a second-rate trying hard copycat.” This drives her to even dream bigger than she could ever imagine. And becomes a bigger star than her idol.
“Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do,” Nobel Prize laureate William Faulkner pointed out. “Don’t bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself.”
“The ability to dream on is one of the fine qualities of the human race that other species do not possess,” someone once explained. So dream on, and put a deadline: make it a giant dream, a tiny one, an old everlasting one, a newfound one, a hobby related one, a change of life one, a religious one, a stupid one, a stroke-of-genius one, or just whatever — just continue to dream on.
“Dreams come true; without that possibility, nature would not incite us to have them,” Pulitzer-prize winning author John Updike said.
In the beginning, your dream may be far-fetched. But keep on. “Never give up,” wrote Richelle E. Goodrich, author of Smile Anyway: Quotes, Verse, and Grumblings for Every Day of the Year. “It’s like breathing—once you quit, your flame dies letting total darkness extinguish every last gasp of hope. You can’t do that. You must continue taking in even the shallowest of breaths, continue putting forth even the smallest of efforts to sustain your dreams. Don’t ever, ever, ever give up.” –#
