WHAT'S THE SIZE OF A DREAM?

I find enthralment in how we have been constructed to somehow believe that the realness or substance of a dream is depended on how big it is. If a dream is a dream and it's meant to be followed, then its capacity shouldn’t be an issue. Following the start of my blog, I posted a status saying I know what I want to do for the rest of my life and someone commented and said ‘don’t tell me it's blogging’. Although I wasn’t referring to blogging at that time, I rode along so that I can get the reason this particular person was denouncing my blogging for a living. Anyway, the conversation didn’t go anywhere but this what I what I got from it.

It is very unfortunate that we live in a world that doesn’t make it easy for someone to follow their passion. More often than not, circumstances don’t allow one to do what they love. Imagine telling your single mother, after passing Grade 12 that you want to sing or act or just follow the arts in general. The first question, which will be followed by many, will be ‘what are you going to eat?’ dare you tell them that God will provide, you’ll be slapped back into reality. Have you forgotten that you've got a family to support? The rent and the electricity won’t pay themselves. Oh, just by and by, how are you going to get to the auditions? Those are the questions that will make you think ‘straight’ and get a ‘real’ job. It's one thing to have a dream and another to have it catered for. And you cannot expect someone to suspend their agenda so that yours can advance.

Going back to the size of a dream, it seems the smaller the dream, the better it is achievable. However, we should bear in mind that size is relative. But what remains is that, the legitimacy of your dream will be authenticated by its fruition. Surely the person that posed a disbelief in my blogging for a living had questions related to money in mind. How am I going to survive? What about my immediate needs? Is blogging going to yield money? I don’t blame them because in order to survive, we need money. The saddest thing though is letting our dreams lie dormant all in the pursuit of money, a means to survive. Waking up every day and the only good thing about your job is when it's time to go home; the misery of looking forward to Friday, while still on Sunday. I can only imagine the response you give to your dream when it wakes you up in the middle of the night, when no one but your mind is present. When there is really nothing more to say- expect why, but since why is difficult to handle, you take refuge in ‘how’. Like I said, sometimes it's the circumstances that don’t allow, but every so often it's the fear of being so free that you let anything render you prison. I will leave you with this question that I always ask myself “if money weren’t an issue, what would I rather be doing?”

“Discipline is a yes, creativity is a question...as a quality, discipline allows you to work for someone else, to follow instructions and do what you're told you must, even when you don’t want to... Creativity allows you to be an entrepreneur, a revolutionary and a free human being. It is creativity that allows us to imagine a different world” ~ Maya Wegerif