Dreams

1 March 2008

There is a time you reach in your life when you have to accept that you will never do certain things.

I will never be an astronaut.

I will never be a Formula 1 driver.

I will never be a musician in a big rock band.

As you’re growing up you get quite accustomed, or at least I did, to a sense of almost limitless possibility. Yes, becoming an astronaut would be a bit of stretch – I wasn’t a foolish child – but still, by the year 2000 everyone would be going to space, right? Things were possible.

However, there comes a point where you realise that actually, no – some things just aren’t going to happen. Worse then that, quite possibly, is the realisation that you don’t want these things to happen.

I’d be a rubbish astronaut – I don’t even like flying for gods sake.

I can’t stay on the track for to long playing Gran Turismo, so I’d probably kill myself before I got to any decent speed in a F1 car. And I find go karting pretty scary.

I find going to more then one gig a week pretty exhausting, so how would I manage to go on tour?

Of course, it’s the last one that is the most difficult dream to let go of. The ideal of the band and the musicianship is one that’s so close – so almost within grasp – that it’s the hardest one to call time on. But, like it or not, it’s something that is never going to happen. You hold onto the dream for so long, you start to forget why you had it in the first place; it’s such a universal quest, though, that seems to resonate through so many people. Admittedly, my social circle is awash with people in and out of bands but I’m not sure if I know of anybody that hasn’t lusted after music, after being in a band and after ‘the dream’.

Moving on, though, and abandoning your dreams is not quite the depressing and devastating thought that it might initially sound like. What they don’t tell you (probably because they haven’t realised) is that yes, your dreams are not achievable and yes you will at some point realise and wonder why you bothered even having them but – and this is the important point – that just means you’ve freed yourself up to think of some new ones.

Abandon your dreams.

The ones you have today are going to be so much better.

From: Articles

1 March 2008