I believe that each person is a very special, unique individual.
I
also believe that everyone has a passion - if only they could
discover
it.
And let me state one final belief: I believe that if you
will only
follow your passion - your dream - then everything will be
all
right. It will work out.
You'll make enough money to live
on, perhaps even get rich, but
more importantly you'll have a
joy-filled and truly meaningful life.
The alternative is to live a
life like our primitive ancestors -
grueling, desperate, toil-filled
days devoid of meaning other than
brute survival.
The
difference is that they had no choice. You do.
Now I want to say a
word about 'meaningful.'
Do you, like me, equate the words
'meaningful' and 'dream' with
something hugely important; of
tremendous significance to mankind?
For example, do you think
that a dream in order to be meaningful
has to be something like
this?:
Invent antigravity.
Invent faster than light
travel.
Write a book which will profoundly change the lives of
all six
billion people on the planet.
Create a world-changing
philosophy.
Eradicate poverty, disease and hunger from the
world.
Overthrow the government, and start an entirely new
political
system invented by you.
Write a series of
symphonies which make Mahler and Mozart look like
amateurs.
Climb
every mountain; ford every stream; follow every rainbow.
In other
words, are you trapped, like I was, by the belief that
your
'meaningful dreams' have to be grandiose, or they are not
worth
pursuing? Do you believe that small dreams are for small
people and
that only giant dreams are worth having?
If so, what on earth are
we to make of dreams like this?
"I was a cost control accountant
for IBM. One day I was driving
through the countryside on my way to a
sales meeting. Suddenly,
about half a mile away, I saw abroken down
windmill.
To this day, I don't know what happened, but something
about that
windmill called to me. As though guided by a will other
than my
own, I turned off the road and drove down the bumpy track
leading
to the mill.
It was completely deserted, and
dilapidated. Using my mobile
telephone, I cancelled my meeting. I
don't know what possessed me.
I had never cancelled a meeting before
except for serious reasons
such as ill health. Little was I to know
that this was the most
important cancellation of them all. At that
moment I knew I wanted
to own that mill and restore it to full
working order.
Of course, it was crazy. I had a responsible job,
paying a good
salary. I knew nothing about windmills. Literally
nothing.
Correction: I knew that they went round and round, and
somehow
ground corn into flour. But at that moment I found my passion
in
life. To cut a long and difficult story short (for I will not
pretend
it was easy), I located the owner of the mill and purchased
it from
him. I gave up my job and career and moved with my family
into a
house near the mill. We spent two years restoring it, and
now run it
as a working windmill and museum.
I'll never get rich running the
mill, but we make enough to make
ends meet. The important thing is
that the last two years have been
the happiest of my life.
Perhaps
I won't always own the mill. It's possible I might get
tired of it
one day. But that doesn't matter. By then I'll have
another dream and
I will know that it is possible to follow your
dreams and to
succeed. From where I am sitting, I cannot even begin
to understand
how I spent so many years as an accountant. It seems
utterly
fantastic to me now."
This man is not going to save the world,
cure all known diseases,
or eradicate poverty. He found a dream which
was his unique destiny
or vision, and had the guts to follow it. His
dream was entirely
insignificant on a global, or even local scale.
He did not change
anybody's life apart from his own.
What were
the needs which this dream fulfilled?
I can only guess. Perhaps
he needed to create something with his
bare hands. Perhaps he needed
to control something in its entirety
- be responsible for all of the
cogs, rather than just be a cog
himself. Perhaps he wanted to earn
his living in an honest way, and
saw accountancy as basically a
dishonest profession. Only he could
tell you.
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