The title of this blog is a very lovely line to read, I don't know who said it, but we all must have come across it many times. We especially hear it during motivational talks or can find it in any motivational material. No doubt its meaning is very beautiful and it's one of the very inspiring quotes. But how easy it is to practice this thing in real life? How many people are lucky to have just one dream in their life that they can chase? What to do if one has more than one dream, how can one follow or chase all of them? There are many questions like this and this is my attempt to find some practical answers for some of these questions and also try to explain what I take from this quote. This is by no means my recommendation for others but just my point of view about following one's dreams, everyone needs to derive their own meanings from these types of lines.
At least in my case, my dreams kept on changing many times in my life till now. During various phases of my childhood and teenage, I wanted to become someone based on who influenced me during that phase of my life. I didn't even consciously choose my current career path, actually, this was not possible at least for me for various reasons. I never had the luxury of choosing what I wanted to study, my marksheet decided it for me. I am sure very few at that time or even today do this in India (choose a career path of their own interest). There can be various reasons for this like market demand and scope for that particular field, fierce competition, lack of awareness or options, and parent's pressure and expectations. I just walked in the direction in which life took me, gave my best possible efforts, expected good results, and landed where I am today. I have no major regrets for that and I am very happy with my overall journey. So far it has been an exciting and very rewarding experience for me. Eventually, I started liking the field that I chose and today I love it (chemistry, drug discovery), but honestly, it was not my dream or conscious choice to work in this field. I am sure many like me must have traveled a similar path in their life as far as their career choice is concerned. Now I dream of discovering a drug that can cure some major illness, want to work towards making people understand the usefulness and limitations of drugs, want to explain to them how and why drugs work or fail and what they can do to remain healthy. But honestly, none of these was my passion or dream when I entered this field as I had no clue about any of these things at that time.
At least in my case, my dreams kept on changing many times in my life till now. During various phases of my childhood and teenage, I wanted to become someone based on who influenced me during that phase of my life. I didn't even consciously choose my current career path, actually, this was not possible at least for me for various reasons. I never had the luxury of choosing what I wanted to study, my marksheet decided it for me. I am sure very few at that time or even today do this in India (choose a career path of their own interest). There can be various reasons for this like market demand and scope for that particular field, fierce competition, lack of awareness or options, and parent's pressure and expectations. I just walked in the direction in which life took me, gave my best possible efforts, expected good results, and landed where I am today. I have no major regrets for that and I am very happy with my overall journey. So far it has been an exciting and very rewarding experience for me. Eventually, I started liking the field that I chose and today I love it (chemistry, drug discovery), but honestly, it was not my dream or conscious choice to work in this field. I am sure many like me must have traveled a similar path in their life as far as their career choice is concerned. Now I dream of discovering a drug that can cure some major illness, want to work towards making people understand the usefulness and limitations of drugs, want to explain to them how and why drugs work or fail and what they can do to remain healthy. But honestly, none of these was my passion or dream when I entered this field as I had no clue about any of these things at that time.
Follow or chase your dream is easy advice to offer but can be very confusing to follow. No doubt, it sounds very romantic and inspirational and can motivate many people to pursue their own interests. This advice helped me many times in my life and this blog itself is the result of my dream to share my thoughts with others on a larger platform. But sometimes situations or our own limitations stop us from doing what we want to do, then depending on the situation it's better to take a pause and think about our next step and if required keep our dream on hold (but this doesn't mean to forget or to squash or kill it completely). This detour may help us to get to the situation where we can give it a try to bring it into reality. This is a practical way of pursuing our passions without getting too much in trouble because very few of us have the courage to put it all on the line to chase our passion. Many times things done purely with emotional instincts without much serious thinking may not produce the desired result. By this, I don't mean emotions are not important, but we need to strike a proper balance. It's also true that people learn from mistakes so one needs to make mistakes first to learn from them, at the same time, we can learn from others' mistakes also. We should not be scared to take risks or make mistakes for things we really care about and really want. After all, we live only once and we need to make the most out of it.
I chase my dreams as much as possible, and I take some calculated risks. So far this approach has suited me and produced the desired results for me. I see some people take enormous risks to chase their dreams, I admire them and respect them but I am not one of them (but you never know). I hope everyone finds their dream and figures out their own way to chase them because dreams are important, they give us new aims and new goals, give us a reason to wake up and work hard and we all need at least one such reason.
Thanks for reading and please share your views on this topic.
[Copyright: Vinay Thakur. Please contact the author for re-posting or publishing]
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