W02 - The Importance of Dreams

When I was a child, we moved around a lot. My father was in industrial construction (power plants mostly) and I never lived anywhere longer than four years. Part of living a fairly transient lifestyle is becoming comfortable with change and a lack of stability. Don’t get me wrong, we were always comfortable, my father was in management and earned a good salary. I just didn’t grow up around my extended family like grandparent or cousins.

I think that lifestyle really impacted me in ways that I am still figuring out. All of my childhood dreams had to do with me succeeding in various ways: Sports, career, etc. Very few of my childhood dreams involved other people or having my own family.

I think dreaming is very important, but I also think our dreams should be dynamic and adaptive. For example, my biggest dream as a young child was to play major league baseball. And I worked my tail off to get there! There were very few times between the sixth grade and twelfth grade that I couldn’t be found on the diamond. I was an excellent catcher, I started varsity all four years and played in college before going on a mission. But I never made the Major Leagues. 

Failure taught me two things:

1. Sometimes we fail, no matter how hard we try.
2. Dreams that don’t help you get where you want to go aren’t worth achieving.

I haven’t played baseball or even softball in more than twenty-five years. Yet my life is full and satisfying. I don’t miss baseball. I don’t even watch it on television. I believe I’ve outgrown my childhood dreams and replaced them with dreams and ambitions that are far better for me than the glory stadiums of fans on summer days. Being a professional baseball player would mean that I don’t have the life I have today, and I wouldn’t trade that for the world.

In Randy Pausch’s “last lecture” he shared his childhood dreams and which ones he was able to accomplish. I think Randy is lucky to have been able to identify lifelong loves like technology and visual arts at such a young age. But Randy also worked hard and put himself in a position to fulfill some of those childhood goals. For example, after gaining education in a relevant field, he applied to be an imagineer and was politely rejected. But Randy still worked in the field and continued to develop his talents. That led to another opportunity and to achieving his dream. He didn’t let one rejection kill his dream. He continued to develop himself and sought more opportunities.

I think that’s the key to his achievements. Not letting the brick wall stop him. He continued and tried again. No, he didn’t meet every goal, but he still learned valuable life lessons from his failures. Then he prepared himself to seize opportunities when they came up later or made his own opportunities, like on the zero gravity story.

Randy achieved as much as he did because he prepared himself everyday and didn’t let his first rejection stop him from trying again. That’s a lesson for all of us.