THE DREAM STEALER

FROM HERE AND THERE

The Dream Stealer

During one of my Training Programs, which I conduct for industrial workers, was a small exercise. This was to do with Personal Finance Management. I had asked all the participants to write down their lifetime objectives and phase them, in the now, a bit later in life and finally on retirement.  Then I said we will discuss as to how we can plan to achieve them. I also emphasized the point, that unless you have your goals in life, you just cannot Plan. While we were discussing the objectives written down, I realized that the participants were limiting these objectives to their current status. So I asked them, “Do you have dreams?” There was a unanimous “Yes”. Well then I said make them your objectives. A long and heated argument arose. “Dreams are dreams”, “We cannot make our two ends meet”, “How can dreams become objectives to achieve, look at us now” and a flurry of other remarks. I told them “look your dreams will make you work towards them, to improve your knowledge and skill sets, to listen to your inner voice, to be conscious about life, to work and work hard. Finally to progress in life they will become your largest motivators”. Then I narrated a true a story.

I have a friend named Paramjeet Singh aka Pummy who owns a huge 200 acre farm and a beautiful farm house with milch cattle and poultry and an ideal farm with a drip irrigation system, as well as beautiful Keno orchards. He has always let me use his house to conduct education programs for deprived children, plus conduct summer camps for them, and things like that

The last time I was there with my group he told me a story. It all goes back to a story about a young man who was the son of an itinerant laborer who would go from farm to farm, harvest to harvest, to reap the wheat or the rice. As a result, the boy’s high school career was continually interrupted. When he was a senior, he was asked to write a paper about what he wanted to be and do when he grew up.

That night he wrote a long paper, describing his goal of someday, owning a 200 acre farm with a beautiful farm house. He wrote about his dream in great detail and he even drew a diagram of a 200-acre farm, showing the location of all the buildings, the cowsheds, the poultry sheds and the cropping pattern, the keno orchards and a modern drip irrigation system. Then he drew a detailed floor plan for a 4,000-square-foot house that would sit on the 200-acre dream farm.

He put a great deal of his heart into the project and the next day he handed it in to his teacher. Two days later he received his paper back. On the front page was a large red F: Failed, with a note that read, “See me after class.”

The boy with the dream went to see the teacher after class and asked, “Why did I fail in my paper?”

The teacher said, “This is an unrealistic dream for a young boy like you. You have no money. You come from an itinerant laborers family. You have no resources. Owning a 200 acre farm requires a lot of money. You have to buy the land. You have to pay for the original breeding stock, the fruit tree saplings, and later you’ll have to pay for the tube wells and the irrigation lines and many other things. There’s no way you could ever do it.” Then the teacher added, “If you will rewrite this paper with a more realistic goal, I will reconsider your grade.”

The boy went home and thought about it long and hard. He asked his father what he should do. His father said, “Look, son, you have to make up your own mind on this. However, I think it is a very important decision for you”. Finally, after sitting with it for a week, the boy turned in the same paper, making no changes at all.

He stated, “You can keep the F and I’ll keep my dream.”

Pummy then turned to the assembled group and said, “I tell you this story because you are sitting in my 4,000-square-foot farm house in the middle of my 200-acre model farm. I still have that school paper framed over the mantle-piece.” He added, “The best part of the story is that two summers ago that same schoolteacher brought 30 kids to camp out on my farm for a week.” When the teacher was leaving, he said, “Look, Pummy, I can tell you this now. When I was your teacher, I was something of a dream stealer. During those years I stole a lot of kids’ dreams. Fortunately you had enough gumption not to give up on yours. ”

“Don’t let anyone steal your dreams. Follow your heart, no matter what.” Unless you dream you will not achieve.

Have a wonderful week,

Ajay