Dare to Dream

Last week I had the opportunity to travel to Orissa, the Prajapati district, into a place called Serango and see the result of dreams that are in the process of being actualized. It was great to stand on a mountain slope which earlier had nothing on it, but now had a school building. And instead of seeing children hanging around doing nothing, I now saw them smartly dressed and in school, doing something productive with their lives.

I was challenged even as I was able to be part of the dedication, to look at these 145 children, hear some of the speeches that were made, inspiring them, and I couldn’t help wondering that, out of this group who had never even seen an aeroplane, what dreams God birthed that day; whether there would be some who would break out of the confines of their limited thinking and be challenged and inspired by some of the things that they are learning; want to leave the nests and go out and become people that they never thought they could be a year or two ago. I wonder whether those kind of dreams were fostered.

Thinking about that, I thought that it was par for the course of life too. All of us have dreams. All of us carry little pouches that have these things that God has placed within us that can move us beyond being ordinary and mediocre to people who are able to birth significant things that will have far-reaching consequences in a community or the place that we are in.

I wonder in this Tuesday morning group of people, how many of us are pursuing the dreams that we have, or are we caught up going through the motions of doing what we think we need to do.

Oliver Wendell Holmes said, “The greatest thing in this world is not so much in where we are but in what direction we are moving.” It’s not where you and I are, but are we on the right path? Do our dreams make us move beyond our thoughts to our feelings? Why? As long as they are just intellectual thoughts, we can stimulate them when we want, play around with them, we can fantasize a little with them and then leave them there. But once they get translated to feelings, passion is ignited. We need to be passionate about the dreams that we have.

In 1935 Herbert Humphrey was a 24 year old pharmacist from Minnesota and on his first trip to Washington he wrote to his wife saying “I can see how someday, you and I, if we just apply ourselves and make up our minds to work for bigger things, we can someday live in Washington and maybe be in politics or government. I hope my dream comes true. I’m going to try anyhow.” Twenty-nine years later, he was serving as Vice President under Lyndon Johnson. He was able to translate his dream into a passion. From a 24 year old pharmacist who thought that he could make a difference in politics.

It takes hunger and tenacity and commitment to see a dream through until it becomes reality. And of course there will be many, many people who will try to subvert that dream, to derail it, to get you to see what they want out of their lies and have you help them. But you need to hold on to your dream.

I was reading through John Maxwell’s book ‘The Success Story’ and a lot of my thoughts today are coming from that wonderful book. He tells the story of a Canadian bird who decided that it was too much trouble to fly south for the winter. So the bird said to itself, “If I can brave a winter; a lot of other animals do it. It can’t be that hard. When all the other birds flew away to sunny South America, he stayed behind and waited for winter. But by the end of November he was having serious second thoughts. He’d never been so cold and he couldn’t find any food. Finally he broke down and realized that if he didn’t get out of there soon, he wasn’t going to make it. So he started flying south all by himself. After a while it began to rain and before he knew it, the water was turning to ice on his wings. Struggling, he recognized that he couldn’t fly any longer. He knew he was about to die so he glided down and made his last landing, crashing to the ground in a barnyard. As he lay there stunned, a cow came by, stepped over him and emptied its bowel over him. The bird was totally disgusted. “Here I am,” he thought, “freezing to death, on my last breath, and then this. What an awful way to go!” The bird held its breath and prepared to die. But after about 2 minutes he discovered that a miracle was taking place. He was warming up. The ice on his wings was melting, his muscles were thawing out, his blood was flowing again. He realized that he was going to make it, got so excited that he began to sing a glorious song. At that moment the old tomcat that was lying in the hayloft heard the bird singing and couldn’t believe it. He said to himself, “Is that a bird? I thought they had all gone south for the winter.” He came out of the bard and lo and behold, there was the bird. The cat crossed over to where the bird was, pulled him gently out of the cow dung, cleaned him off and ate him.

Maxwell says that there are 3 morals to the story.

   1. Not everyone who drops cow dung on you is your enemy.
   2. Not everyone who takes the cow dung off you is your friend.
   3. If somebody does drop cow dung on you, keep your mouth shut.

He says, “The same can be true for you as you realize your dream. Some people you consider friends will fight your success. Others will support you in ways you did not expect. But no matter which people criticize you or how they do it, don’t let them take your focus off your dream.

Are there deterrents to your dream, to your fulfilling them? Yes of course. Deterrents to your dream can be fear and the inability to translate those thoughts and feelings into actions. Remember, it must go from thinking to passion. That’s where your emotions and your feelings are involved. But it cannot stay there. It must be translated into action.

Listen to these quotes that have come up about fear over 375 years.

    Sir Francis Bacon said in 1623, “Nothing is terrible except for fear itself.”
    200 years later the Duke of Wellington said, “The only thing I am afraid of is fear.”
    Franklin Roosevelt said, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

What is the fallout of fear? Fear breeds inaction. Inaction leads to lack of experience. Lack of experience fosters ignorance. And ignorance breeds fear again. Note the cycle. As we fear, we procrastinate. And as we procrastinate our dreams gather dust and are hidden away in some of the darkest places of our lives.

The University of Michigan did a study on fear. 60% of our fears are unwarranted. They never come to pass. 20% of our fears are focused on our past which we all know is completely out of our control. 10% of our fears are based on things so petty that they made no difference in our lives. Of the remaining 10%, only 4-5% could be considered justifiable. Think of the amount of energy we spend on 95% of our fears; they are counter-productive and a complete waste of time. Will there be failures along the way? Of course there will be failures. The key to moving along is to accept our failures and to learn from them. Because if we don’t learn from our failures, they can never be as the old adage says, ‘Stepping stones to success’.

General George C. Patten was one of the most successful generals in World War 2 said, “The time to take counsel of your fears, is before you make an important battle decision. That’s the time to listen to every fear you can imagine. When you have collected all the facts and fears and made your decision, turn off all of your fears and go ahead.”

Cus D’Amato, a professional boxing manager for many years said, “The hero and the coward both feel the same fear; only the hero confronts his fears and converts it into fire.”

John Wooden, successful UCLA basketball coach says this, “Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do. Focus on the things that you can control not the things that you can’t. For the real issue is not whether you are going to fail. Are you going to allow your fears to trip you up? It’s whether you are going to fail successfully, prospering from your failure or allowing failure to send you into a permanent detour.”

Nelson Boswell says, “The difference between greatness and mediocrity is often how an individual views mistakes.”

Dream. Think them, feel them and act on them and acting on them means taking all your expertise, your knowledge, your resources, your experiences and applying them in actualizing your dream. From your head to the ground is an important process and a powerful journey.

R. Gopalakrishnan, for Tata Sons, in an interview with professors at Wharton Business School at the University of Pennsylvania said, “The reason why we (Indian managers) are successful is that we think in English and act in Indian. For an Indian manager his intellectual tradition, his y axis is his Anglo-American and his action vector, that is his x axis, is his ethos.” Basically what he was saying if I can reduce it to a simple statement, “What you know, what you’ve learnt, what you’ve accumulated over the years needs to be contextualized into the environment that you’re in, for a dream to become a success.”

I pray that your dreams, the ones that you are carrying, that God has placed within you will find success because you’re willing to take those first steps in actualizing them. Remember, you’re never alone. God is with you. He births the dreams. He will help you to make it see daylight.

God Bless You All.