Thoughts
Dreams aren’t supposed to be realistic
I’ve seen a lot of people my age, both my friends and strangers, comment on how they are now adults, they no longer have the dreams or the life plans that they had when they were kids.
When you’re a kid, it’s common to imagine you can be an astronaut or a professional athlete, or a scientist who cures cancer, or an action hero who saves the world. And the, rather cynical, view of many adults is that either these kids are too naive to realize that their dreams are unrealistic, or that maybe the kids have the theoretical potential to do great things, but that potential has expended itself by the time they have a stable job after college.
Either of these views miss two things about kids’ hope. First, The kids dream is, most of the time, not concrete. The kid is projecting an attitude of futuristic optimism about their life on to people that are commonly viewed as great. There are exceptions of course, but most kids who want to be a star athlete in basketball would not at all be disappointed if they ended up being a star athlete in football. Second, the kid holds onto the hole of being a star athlete for long after it’s clear that they won’t be. Most middle schoolers are aware that most people are normal. While middle schoolers may have reigned in their life dreams a little, most of them are still optimistic dreaming about their future in a way that adults are not.
Maybe you don’t agree with me on those points, but it’s still possible to agree with my conclusion: “optimistic dreaming,” that is, having a “dream” for the rest of your life is an attitude. You’re about as likely to become an astronaut now as you were when you were born. The facts haven’t changed, your attitude has.