Dreams keep evolving and getting filtered over time. For instance, a child’s dream is almost always a little too ambitious while an adult usually has an attainable goal.
Children with innocence in their hearts, always look at the world with rose-tinted glasses. They look at the world as a place where everything is possible. They don’t
see hurdles or the barriers. All they see is their dream and all they have is an aspiration to attain the dream. Their dreams are full-blown and often delusionary.
Children are unaware of the tact and wit one needs to conquer the world. They are unaware of the challenges and the hurdles. They are unaware of the blows that might come their way. When children dream, there is no inhibition to what they aspire to become. They dream of reaching for the moon, they dream of travelling the world, they dream of salvaging humanity. They dream of owning huge mansions and a good number of cars. They all are unaware about the real world that lies in front of them.
Children enjoy the flight of imagination based on the fairy-tales in their shelves. They genuinely believe that they are the hero of the story, and the world is for them to triumph over. Some children want to become the protagonists they see in the famous cartoons and TV shows. Others aspire to become the inventors, discoverers, warriors, and history makers that they learn about in the class. They feel like it is all possible and plausible.
The very same children start growing and then get closer to the reality. They start understanding a little about how the society works and what the society expects of them. They start taking on to more realistic and reasonable goals such as becoming a doctor, an engineer, a lawyer, and they wish to pursue a profession that has high value in the society. They start understanding that they need to aspire towards a dream that involves both money and respect. Ask any child what they want to do and almost always, probably 90 percent of the time, the child answers “I want to become a doctor!” or “A teacher”.
These children grow up further to understand that life is full of challenges, hurdles, and tests. They realise that the road to success is never straight. They start coming across reality checks at every point in their lives and everywhere from home to school. They realise that the distance between their goals and them is determined by a lot of factors including financial status of the family to their own caliber and inclination.
Dreams eventually start evolving when a person becomes a teenager. For example, if a teenager who has always aspired to become an engineer realises that math is not his strongest suit, he will start aspiring for a dream that doesn’t involve math. This is to say, the dreams start going through a filtration process depending upon how feasible they are.
By teenage, young people start realising that dreams depend upon hard-work and skills, but also privilege. For example, a kid from a rich family can aspire to go to a private college and choose the course of her choice, it may not be the same case for a child from a poor family. An underprivileged child often has to take what is offered to her.
Dream is a funny thing, it gives a person direction and a sense of purpose in life, but sometimes it also breaks a person. The process of dream evolution can be quite painful. When a person realises that what they have dreamt of all their life is unattainable, they get frustrated. They feel punished and unloved and like their whole life is a lie.
It is important to encourage children to dream, but we need to encourage them to dream realistically. Life is not a bed of roses, and the sooner the children learn this, the better it is. One needs to be taught from early on in their lives that working hard and honing one’s skills play important roles in bringing one closer to their dreams.
However, courage and determination can change the direction of the winds and help one move mountains.
