Dreams

An athlete cannot run with money in his pockets. He must run with hope in his heart and dreams in his head.

Mr. Toastmaster, fellow toastmasters and guests, a very good evening. I request you all to close your eyes for a few seconds and let your thoughts wander. Think about the dreams you have had and if you have followed them. I am sure few of us are thinking about what we wanted to be when we were kids while a few of us our thinking about our dream girl or girls. It is safe to say that all of us, at some point in our life, have had dreams, some big while some small, some which we followed while others which we just left.

As a child, I used to dream. Well, mostly because I had nothing better to do. I used to dream about jungles and castles, about horses and airplanes. I remember that I used to tell myself that I would grow up to become an astronaut which later changed to becoming a traffic police man. I could sit at the same place and stare at the wall and be in my own little world, far away from reality and at the end of it, it made me happy. Though I was not physically strong and my resources were limited, my imagination was not!

Then the inevitable happened. I started to grow up. I was soon caught up in the “realities” of life. The only thing that I could see when I closed my eyes now was sin theta and cos theta. There was hardly any time to dream! It was as if someone had pinched me and I had suddenly snapped back to reality.

It was only after I was done with my graduation did I get the time to sit and think. The first thing that I did was I looked back at how my life has shaped up. I tried to recollect what all I used to dream about and whether I have lived those dreams or not. On analyzing, I realized that I had forgotten all about my dreams and I had stopped dreaming all together. At that point, I asked myself why I had stopped dreaming. Why could I now not think beyond a week? Why was I putting all my energy into achieving my short term goals? I had become so consumed by my daily activities that I did not get any time to think and even if I did, I would end up thinking about what I did that day or how I am going to survive the next day. The more I thought, the more I got confused.

I could come up with two main reasons regarding why people stop dreaming. Firstly, I feel it is the fear of failure that stops us. As we start to grow up, we build a wall around ourselves; a wall which curbs our thoughts because it puts in us the fear of failure.  We are so scared of failure that we don’t pursue our dreams and once we stop pursuing them, we stop having new ones.

Secondly, it could be the fear of being laughed at. I remember, when I was a kid, I used to tell people that I dream that I will fly one day and people used to call me cute. I am sure if I say the same thing today, I will be laughed at. It is this fear of being embarrassed that stops us from letting our mind wander.

So should we let these two fears dictate our lives? All the inventions have not taken place over night. Just imagine what would have happened if Graham Bell did not dream about telephones because he was scared of failure or Wright brothers did not dream about airplanes because they were scared that they would be laughed at. Any successful story has a long history of failures. All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them. We should not let the failures stop us; instead we should treat them as learning experiences.

I would like to share an anecdote that I had heard long back. A group of students visited Mr. Monty’s horse ranch on an education trip. He narrated a story to them. Once a kid was asked to write a paper on what he wanted to do when he grew up. He stayed up the entire night and wrote a seven-page paper describing his goal of owning a horse ranch. He wrote about his dream in great detail and he even drew a diagram of a 200-acre ranch, showing the location of all the buildings, the stables and the track. Then he drew a detailed floor plan for a 4,000-square-foot house that would sit on a 200-acre dream ranch. Two days later he received his paper back. On the front page was a large red ‘F’. The teacher said, `This is an unrealistic dream for a young boy like you. You have no money. You have no resources. Owning a horse ranch requires a lot of money. There’s no way you could ever do it. Then the teacher added, `If you will rewrite this paper with a more realistic goal, I will reconsider your grade. Finally, after sitting with it for a week, the boy turned in the same paper, making no changes at all. He stated, “You can keep the F and I’ll keep my dream”. It was only later that they realized that the boy was none other than Mr. Monty himself. He had followed his dream and today owned a 200-acre ranch.

A dream doesn't become a reality through magic; it takes sweat, determination and hard work.

To conclude, I would like to say, let us all try to break down the wall that we have created around us. Let us make a promise to ourselves that we will let our mind wander because without dreams we are no better than machines.  

Believe in love. Believe in magic. Hell, believe in Santa Clause. Believe in others. Believe in yourself. Believe in your dreams. If you don't, who will?

Mr. Toastmaster, over to you…