Why Do Dreams Die?

Why do dreams die? Do you ever wonder that? Why it seems that so many young, ambitious people have dreams and then all of a sudden their just gone? Just poof? What happened? How did they get to be a middle aged person who hates their job? Where did the time go? Or maybe they don’t hate their job, but it’s just that. Their job is just a job. A way to pay the bills. Not do something fulfilling in their lives. So why is it people settle? Well, here are a few reasons.

1. People give up too easily. Or they procrastinate to the point of no return. They’re all, Oh, I’ll just watch TV for five minutes. Then five hours later they're comatose on the couch watching some interior design show and seriously debating if they should lift their hand to scratch their nose or just leave it. Or they hit one little bump in the road, or one little rejection, and then they deemed that because one person on one day said they weren’t good enough, that it must be true. And now their soul will become dull and they will never achieve their dreams. Okay, so that may be a bit dramatic, but if you’re going to achieve anything odds are you will hit resistance, and you need to be strong enough to get through it, or bye-bye dreams. This is not to say you should work all hours of the day, but that you need to keep going after what it is you want.

2. People don’t actually know what they want. It’s hard to go after a dream if you don’t actually know what it is you want. Sometimes when people say dream they mean the kind of rich lifestyle where you’re so damned rich and pompous that you have people to put food in your mouth for you. Which, if that’s what you want, great. But you need a more solid plan if you ever want to achieve that. You need to find something you love that will make you that rich, or something you can tolerate that will make you that rich. You can’t just expect it to fall out of the sky. Unless you decide to marry an old billionaire about to die. Which if you have low morals and are okay with a little old man sex, is not a bad idea. (Note: I am not suggesting you do this, I’m just saying that if you don’t want to work for things in life, there are ways around that).

3. People put off their dreams. For whatever reason, people seem to love procrastination, and it works just as well with dreams as anything else. They keep hope alive by convincing themselves they’ll do it next week, or next month, or even next year. But that time never comes. They just keep pushing it off and off until eventually they just forget about it. They move on and no longer care, or no longer think about it. Now, sometimes there are circumstances where you have to put off your dreams, like saving the world from some unknown threat that you swear existsyou’re your friends all think you should be committed to an institution. Like one with high level security. But after that you need to work on your dreams. Even if it is a minuscule amount each day you will be that much closer to achieving them.

4. People let others tell them no. It’s hard enough to muster up the courage to go after your dreams on your own, but if you have someone who constantly is telling you that you’re going to fail it can be even harder. I don’t know why people feel the need to tell someone that they’re never going to succeed. Maybe their jealous. But whatever the reason, it can cause the person’s dreams to become deflated, and this is truly sad. It’s good to listen to constructive criticism but if people are just telling you that you will never succeed, then you need to build a wall and just tune them out. In fact, go ahead and build a literal wall and just carry it around with you. That way when they start talking you can just cut them off. Although you might look kind of stupid and if you’re wall is made of bricks that could get kind of heavy. But I bet you’d have really nice arms.

5. People let someone else tell them what their dream is. This is almost the opposite of number four. It’s the people who push their dreams onto others and live vicariously through them, because they never got to achieve their dream. Then the person’s dream is inevitably lost from the beginning because it was never allowed to develop. If this is you, then you need to take hold of your own life and do what you want to do. Not what someone tells you is the right choice. Including society’s choice or what looks right (getting a job, education, ect. Not that these are bad things, but you have to want to do these things for yourself and not because someone else tells you that you must do this or you will fail at life). Ultimately, if you want to be happy, you need to do what you love, not what someone else tells you to love.

Well there you have it, some reasons that dreams slink off to the dream graveyard at night to lie in agonizing misery. Have you ever had a dream die, or caused someone else’s dream to die?