Please, stop following your dreams!

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Today I found this article being retweeted and it makes a lot of sense. (Article to be found HERE) The first two paragraphs goes like this:

Jiminy Cricket ("When you wish upon a star…") would not be happy with me, but the truth is, I'm getting tired of people wasting their lives following dreams they'll never achieve.  I have screenplays on my desk from writers who "have a dream" about writing a Hollywood screenplay, but aren't interested in actually attending a writing class.  I met an actor recently who left his wife and young son to pursue his dream of an acting career.  The problem is, he has absolutely no talent.  I received a self-published book in the mail a few days ago, with a letter asking me if I'd help the writer market the book.  But the book is simply awful (not to mention riddled with misspellings.)

I know -- some of you will push back about me being too harsh.  "Who is Phil Cooke to dash someone's dream?"  "How arrogant to tell someone they don't have talent or they're pursuing the wrong dream for their life?"

For the rest of the article, please head to the link above. It is for copyright purposes. :)

It does make perfect sense though, that dreams are to be chased and that there's a time period that we need to sharpen our talent (if it is your talent, it wouldn't be so impossibly hard to do so. If it is impossibly hard, then you should question if it is your talent.)

So even in the article itself, he tells of simple, basic but real and rational guidelines to find out what is your talent/calling. The way I started off finding mine is some sort like that but now I know better and easier ways to know what is the calling God has placed within me. (Ask me if you're interested.) But to start off, you can use the ones the article showed. 

I am quite into this kind of topic because I have come across quite a lot of people that are kind of lost in finding what they ought to do. Some lucky ones found their talent and seek to develop it, some found it but are unwilling to go through the hard, mundane process of developing it, some not so lucky to notice and find out their talent, some found their calling, went all happy and that's about it. They expect everything to drop from heaven but soon found out that it doesn't happen that way and sadly they come to that realization too late. Some are even sadder, run after temporary hype, following their emotions that changes oh so often causing them to want to do everything, in the end not achieving anything. They didn't find their focus.

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Mine, I have found a focus which has been going on for a certain time but now I feel like I am in a certain season of change where there's a certain uncertainty and a suspicion of a possible change of focus in perhaps the coming years. Soon I will be facing the reality where I need to make certain and clear choices as to what to do after graduation and where I am heading. I sense a possible shift of focus coming soon. All this became even clearer when I came across that criteria for the Scholarship to study masters in the UK. They want someone who already have things planned out for their coming 10 years after they finish the masters program, sure of where they are going and what they are aiming for. I know, roughly, where I am heading but the clear steps that I need to take, they are not out yet. 

It takes a fighter to hold on to a dream hard and prepare themselves and even fight their way to attain that dream. It takes a fighter to take hold of that dream and believe with all their heart that it is possible to attain that dream.

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I remember the first time I joined LifeGame. I studied hard, got a Masters, couldn't find a job so I settled to be a police woman position which is offered to degree holders. When I am hired, I got the position of an Officer, matching my education level and the job settled my lodging, food and transport which basically means I don't have to worry after anything. There and then, I settled. I worked hard, focus on my job and I got promoted. More responsibility came to me, I took it, did well and got promoted again. Things were fine. I had a mundane life until one day I felt that it is too boring, I decided to find someone and get married to. Unashamedly, I found some random stranger (I always had this thing - "this is a game" in mind) who had no job, no hope, no drive in life, told him I'd pay for everything for the wedding and he can go off to do whatever he pleases. I can even support his living. He agreed and we got married and then before we had our child, the world ended.

One thing that bugged me until today from my experience there, that temptation to settle. This word - SETTLE. Currently, I fear it. I see friends who were once young, lively, full of fire and dreamed dreams suddenly just became mild, the fire small like a candle, and they settle. And worst is, they seemed perfectly contented. I look back at the little "life" I had in LifeGame and it is the same thing. I got a job, even though it wasn't a job I am passionate for, but I had all my needs met and I settled. 

I fear this word - SETTLE because I know that a mundane life will never satisfy me. Perhaps you wouldn't call a life mundane if occasionally you go out clubbing, attend large parties, go travelling or the job travels a lot or you got married to a great person who makes you happy and all. Perhaps yes, my job and events in life may satisfy me for that period of time, my job and my duties at home may OCCUPY me for a while but in the midst of all those things that goes on, if I don't have a bigger calling, if I don't know my ultimate purpose in life, deep within me I will feel empty inside, so empty that no party, no alcohol, no drugs, no relationship, no achievement in life, no job can ever, ever fill it. 

So currently I know I have a much bigger calling that actually makes me nervous (anxious at times!) but excited nonetheless that even sometimes when I have to do all the mundane things, even when I have to drag myself over that giant painful hill, even when I have to dive deep into puddles of mud to find gems, it is that big dream that is driving me on and there is this hope against hope and that certainty that I have this big dream, I have this big calling that the Lord is leading me to and the harder the challenges are, the more I trust that the task that I have to do in the future is big and all that made the things that I have to do, the tears that I have to shed small in comparison to the big thing that I have.

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I don't want to settle. I want to continue to be chasing my big dream by preparing myself and take the necessary steps to reach that big dream. It's not easy and being not easy is probably one of the things that makes it exciting, but at the end when I step across the finishing line, I can look back and see how much I have done and how much I have achieved. And as how a mother looking into the face of their new born baby after a long labour be like, so will crossing the finishing line feels like.

I have come to know that not many sees life this way, not many have a dream and am in the pursuit of their dream. But the question is, do you have a dream and are you holding hard onto that dream and making all the necessary steps towards that dream?

GO READ THE ARTICLE! :P

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