21. Dream dreams
Dream your dreams, dream them big and never stop dreaming.
Sometimes when I get comfortable in a group, I start talking about my dreams. Not the kind you have at night. The kind you carry around with you during the day. Goals, ambitions, long shots. Things I want to build or become.
It probably sounds a bit much. Especially when I’m talking to someone who doesn’t know me well. I can see it on their face, that half-smile that says, “Really? You think you’re going to pull that off?” And I get it. Some of the dreams I talk about sound unrealistic. Maybe they are.
When people hear someone talking about big goals, there’s often this assumption that it’s arrogance. But dreaming isn’t about thinking you’re better than others. It’s just giving yourself permission to imagine something better. And then trying to get there. It’s about living with the possibility that things could be different.
What’s interesting is that even when I don’t achieve the exact dream, the pursuit itself usually takes me somewhere good. Ten years ago, I never imagined living the life I live now. But I know exactly where it came from. It grew out of the dreams I had back then. Not all of them came true. But some did, in ways I couldn’t have predicted. That’s the part people often miss: dreams don’t just fail or succeed. They evolve.
There’s a saying that if you’re always chasing your dreams, you’ll miss the present. I don’t think that’s true. Or at least, it doesn’t have to be. I think having dreams makes the present more meaningful. It gives you a reason to care about what you’re doing today. Because it’s part of where you’re going tomorrow.
It’s a bit like hiking. If you only focused on the summit, you’d probably hate the climb. But if you didn’t have the summit in mind at all, you might not start climbing in the first place. The joy is in both - taking in the view where you are, while still knowing where you’re headed.
And sometimes, the dream itself shifts. You set out to build X, and along the way, you discover Y. That doesn’t mean the dream failed. It means it worked. It got you moving.
This is why I think it’s okay if your dreams sound a little crazy. Most good ideas do at first. If they didn’t, someone else would already be doing them. So when people say, “Be realistic,” I always wonder: realistic by whose standards?
When I look back, the biggest changes in my life didn’t come from playing it safe. They came from chasing something that felt a bit out of reach. And not stopping just because I wasn’t sure it would work.
That’s why I talk about dreams. That’s why I chase them. Because they point me in the right direction. They help me live deliberately.
Paulo Coelho said it best in The Alchemist: “It’s the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting.”
So dream your dreams, dream them big and never stop dreaming.