“The tragedy of life is what dies inside a man while he lives.” Albert Schweitzer
The following is an excerpt from my book All My Best: Wisdom and Encouragement for a Better Life, available on Amazon.
Do you have a dream? I am referring to a dream that fills and enlivens your waking hours, not the dream we sometimes experience in a deep slumber. A vital component to a fulfilled life is having a dream, something we look forward to. Dreams invigorate us, help stir up our passion, and give us fuel to move through life with purpose.
When we have a dream to chase, our days are filled with motion, energy that helps propel us forward toward a prize. The human mind has the ability to construct new ideas for the future, to dream of alternate realities, to paint a picture of a better tomorrow, but many of us fail to dream. Many have abdicated one of their most powerful abilities, the ability to dream.
Hope is the substance that fuels our dreams; it is essential to life. Without hope, the future dims and our journey through life becomes merely a belabored walk, in place of an epic adventure. When we have something to look forward to, a dream to chase down, our lives become impregnated with meaning. When someone is inspired by a dream, everything changes, there is a cadence to their movement. Each day becomes a point on a map that leads to a great destination.
When we discover a dream born from hope, our days weave together to create a passion-filled journey. But without a dream, life becomes something less meaningful, a march of indifference, something plain, void of emotion. Without the passion of a dream to charge our days, life feels more like a trudge toward mediocrity, an existence without the thrill of endless possibility.
Earl Nightingale was one of fifteen surviving Marines on the USS Arizona, one of the ships attacked on December 7th, 1941, at Pearl Harbor. His experience taught him a lesson about the fragility of life. Nightingale went on to inspire millions of lives before passing in 1989; his words meet us today: “Never give up on a dream just because of the time it will take to accomplish it. The time will pass anyway.”
Dr. Albert Schweitzer explained the vital importance of having a dream when he said, “The tragedy of life is what dies inside a man while he lives.” When we fail to chase our dreams, something deep down inside of us dies, day by day.
If you are reading this and realizing you lack a dream, it is never too late to start dreaming again; begin today. Oftentimes, dreams are somewhere inside of us, only needing to be unearthed. Dreams are often covered in fear, lying dormant, but they are still there awaiting a resurrection. If this sounds morbid, that’s because it is—to kill a dream is the same as snuffing a piece of our life, a heinous self-crime. Unfortunately, many teachers, coaches, and parents are dream killers whether they know it or not. But dreams can be brought back to life; to do so, one must autopsy their hope and do everything within their power to regain it, for hope is the voice of our dreams, and however faint the voice, it calls us to better things.
Without a dream, one cannot be fulfilled—we need something to strive for, to reach toward, because to chase a dream is vital to happiness. It leads to a life bursting with vigor and purpose. Without a dream, our lives are hindered—thrown out of rhythm, and we are left longing for vitality. A dream can wake us from our sleepy existence. Do you have a dream?
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