Dreaming as an escape from present failures [Archives:2008/1119/Community]

This article will address both young and old, male and female. It's about how dreaming sometimes is wrongly used as an escape from failures in reality. This is something common to all of us. This isn't a call to stop dreaming, but rather an encouragement to turn dreams into reality instead of the opposite.

All of us have the right to be ambitious. Such ambition is (and should be) like a torch in one's life to attain something. It's a key to success. It keeps one behaving and doing his best to achieve his life's ultimate aim.

When ambition becomes “only a dream,” it remains as those things hardly achieved in reality. What I mean is that some people have ambitions to be something, thinking and talking about it constantly; however, they take no action to achieve it.

The worst case involves those who take no steps toward their ambition, but they also take no action in normal matters; consequently, they meet nothing more than failure. However, such individuals also fail to learn their lessons from this so as to avoid the same result in the future, instead claiming some other unreasonable reasons and justifying that they have even better ambitions to achieve soon.

Having ambition to achieve something encourages people to do their best to achieve that dream. For many, this is normal. However, fear of failure can haunt their minds and consume all of their thoughts, not regarding how to fulfill that dream, but thinking and imagining how it'll be if and when it becomes reality.

Such individuals continually justify themselves in this way and never get fed up; instead, they escape the bitter reality of their failures into a world full of dreams only to deceive themselves.

To illustrate this point, let's look at a real example. A friend of mine aspired to become a minister. Some used to laugh when he told this to others, but he didn't care about their ridiculous responses; instead, he concentrated on how to become a minister.

He determined that the easiest way to achieve this dream was to popularize himself as a good teacher, form relationships and then be nominated as a member of the local council. He succeeded in doing so within two years.

As a local council member, he devoted his time and energies to helping people by chasing down projects for his region. During the election for members of Parliament, although he wanted to be nominated, he couldn't ask for that in order to avoid public misunderstanding.

However, the people themselves nominated him, providing him all possible means and propelling him to victory. Thus, he became a member of Parliament. He didn't forget those from his region, doing his best to offer them all facilities and assistance and supporting them at all times. He still aspires to be a minister, continually discovering ways to achieve that.

Another example involves those who use dreaming as a means to escape their failures in reality. It regards one who claimed that he wanted to be a great businessman. He sometimes worked to collect money to start his project, as he said.

After working a week, he took the next two to three weeks to “plan and think about” his project. However, during that time, he spent all the money he'd collected, only realizing it once the money was gone.

Penniless, he was forced to go anywhere for work, obtaining a job inferior to his qualifications and experience, but that was no shame. Instead, he justified it by maintaining that the job was only temporary because he still aspired to be a businessman and worked toward that ambition. However, he abruptly stopped working, claiming that it was time to initiate his project as an initial step toward achieve his ultimate ambition.

We may meet those from both of these cases. Regardless, only one of them should be a model for us; that is, the one from the first example, whereas the man in the second example must be avoided because he escaped his reality.

Such stories aren't merely for entertainment; rather, they are to be taken as practical lessons for each of us to contrast and then follow the better way – through our mind's eye

Majed Thabet Al-kholidy is a writer from Taiz, currently doing his M.A. at English Dep, Taiz Uni. He is an ex-editor of English Journal of the University.
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