Where did everyone go?
Dreams, aspirations and Imagination are all good things, they are good for your health especially when they are concerned with good emotions: They help the body produce Oxytocin which make you happy (that happy feeling you get right after eating your best meal made by your sweet mom). But never take life too seriously: as you progress with reading, this initial statement will sounder very counterintuitive.
To understand why and how people dream, it is important we understand the type of people that exist for every type of dream.
We have those who dream and achieve by chance (may be due to the benevolence of a benefactor); those who dream and work hard to achieve; those who dream and do not work hard to achieve it (they complain a lot); those who don’t really desire anything and are ready to take whatever life throws at them.
Then again, I am Christian: I believe in God. In this era humans have freedom of worship and views concerning religion. However, I’ll analyse everything from an agnostic point of view. Or for the importance of acknowledging a greater being ceteris paribus God loves everyone and blesses everyone equally.
Those Who dream and achieve by chance
This is a typical Cinderella story; the odds are you may never be this lucky in your life as far as wealth and self-actualization are concerned. People win Lotteries and some people are just so damn lucky and get gifted. Others just get married to a rich person, the spouse dies, and they get all the wealth as inheritance. In a nutshell, it is okay to hope that you may end up ever being as lucky as Cinderella in your life time but sitting down and waiting isn’t going to get you anywhere. The chances of you being unlucky is so high you are better of engaging in a Ponzi scheme.
Those Who Dream and Work Hard to Achieve
This is an individual who knows the difference between a Cinderella movie and reality (or the person just never watch Cinderella). This Individual is fully aware life is a like a sinusoidal wave and that to stay above the safe zone you need to work hard and be strategic. There is an important thing to know about, which is delayed gratification. In layman terms this is when you have a plate of spaghetti and a giant piece of sausage, you eat all the spaghetti which is not so tasty to finally have just the sausage remaining where you can slowly munch and enjoy your success. Simple, struggle now to enjoy later time: lest you die prematurely, which will be a bummer because you didn’t get to enjoy the fruit of your own labour. Fortunately, this will not really be a problem because people under this phylum tend to think of the greater benefit: Working hard and providing for future generations, wife, kids, Organization, affiliation. Whatever may be the motivation of this attitude, it is seldom motivated by greed. But these individuals tend to get so passionate that it may look awkward to a lot of bystanders.
An individual who works hard to achieve his or her dream has a tremendous work ethic. A common example is the famous retired professional basketball player Kobe Bryant who used to make sure he makes 800 shots always at his personal training session before leaving the gym during his active career times. How do you expect to shoot better than someone like that? Good work ethic requires discipline, and discipline requires conviction. These are all very exclusive values that don’t come all in one dreaming package. Neither are you born with them (though your personality may make you more inclined to have certain traits), they are learnt and practiced.
Before you begin your journey to achieve your dreams you need to overcome this inertia preventing you from moving forward. This is just like the escape velocity needed to leave the earth’s gravitational pull that is roughly 11.2Kms-1 to move into space where you can achieve a lot. This can be done by confidence building, risk taking and overcoming shyness or pride. These seem very unimportant but in fact are the most important steps in achieving success. People who work hard to achieve their dreams are not oblivious of the existence of gravitational potential: which is the work done in moving a body in space from infinity back to the gravitational pull. They overcome this always attracting failure factor by staying focus, avoiding complacency, getting back up when they fall, and having a plan. It is very hard to give a detailed description of what goes into success because at the time I wrote this article I wasn’t there yet, but I have read many success stories and it is very funny to believe the human mind knows good and bad and knows what to do to achieve good: Due to laziness or for other reasons we just ignore.
Those Who Dream and do not Work Hard to Achieve it
For many reasons I don’t blame anyone for falling into this category. Depending on the individual this state can be temporal. One may be distracted, one may have a girlfriend or a boyfriend that is making them ineffective or an early Marriage (not that marriage is bad) which was unplanned. The thing about achieving your dreams is that you should be ready to work hard towards it. Yet as I said earlier doesn’t come in the dream package but can be purchased exclusively at the “Hardwork” store. I consider this state to be the default state of every person, until you emancipate. And it takes a lot of inertia to come out of this.
A lot of people think that by just having a CS degree, you can code, or you will be smart, but I have a lot of colleagues in my CS class in college who can’t code. It’s easy to get through college doing CS without knowing how to do a lot of things: Having friends do your assignment, cramming things you never studied including codes. My point is, you can’t make it by just passing through the system normally like everyone else. There is a point where you need to stand out and be serious and seize every opportunity that passes by. You also need to develop a good work ethic and have a good plan about how you want things to turn out including contingencies upon contingencies (this is arguable). You can’t make it far being lazy either. Laziness and success are mutually exclusive.
Most importantly you need to find out what works for you. Like Pythagorean theorem there is no single route to getting to a point. But it is paramount you find the best route that suits you and remain laser focused.
Those who don’t really desire anything and are ready to take whatever life throws at them
There are some people who just desire a simple life, nothing big. Some people are just not motivated to achieve anything at all and are just running a race not caring about their position but just run the race because everyone else is running. Such people may not really desire any specific thing in life. I remember asking a guy in high school what course he will like to pursue in college, he answered me saying his parents will choose his courses for him, he doesn’t really mind, any job is good provided it brings money. There is nothing wrong with being ambitious, but there is also nothing wrong with living simply. Humans are autonomous and should be allowed to decide for themselves. For such people, parents who act in paternalistic ways end up frustrating such children or people.
Those Who Dream and Work Hard to Achieve and Still Fail
This is a very severe case I didn’t mention in my introduction. The reason for failing or underachieving after so much hard work is due to so many reason. One may be Hexed or cursed or may be some wicked old granny is just stealing your shine, or something known in Akan as Efie fuo which translates to House people and it is a situation where some envious extended or distant family member is jealous of what you may become and decides to use some juju on you. Or maybe you just have so much bad luck or you are the victim of very bad karma.
Unfortunately, these are not things I am going to comment about, since this article is based on agnostic facts rather than spiritual innuendo’s which not everyone believes in.
Even though this scenario looks unpractical it is not uncommon. To be able to transcend from such a curse one should consider things around him that are negative and not fruitful. This could be friends you spend time with, habits such as drinking and stealing, bad personal hygiene, bad health due to sedentary life or lack of regular exercise or good diet, disobedience, making bad decisions and many more.
Imagine a CEO of a company always getting drunk and tearing down the company’s reputation. That person will be relieved of his or her duty. The kind of friends we keep around can also play an important role in where we find ourselves. This because friends give both positive and negative advice which we take. Friends also engage use in activities that may or may not be fruitful: This may utilize our time which is a scarce resource. If we waste time engaging in unfruitful things with our friends (this could be petty gossip or philander), we end up wasting a lot of time in the day that could be used for a whole lot of things that could bring change to our lives. At the end of the day, when we sum the resultant forces of our daily activities which includes our hard work summed together with our wasted time doing unnecessary damaging things, your resultant output is most likely less than or equal to 0. That’s why we work so hard but still don’t achieve.
The Questions we need to ask ourselves when the day is over and we all head back to our homes and lives every day for the coming years is WHERE DID EVERYONE GO?
Where is that guy in college who used to always code or read or always have some business or money-making scheme going on. Where is that student who didn’t value a university degree as his pass to success and was always engaging in other activities. Where is my ex-girlfriend or ex-boyfriend now? (for this I will answer) probably married to some money bag, or probably has a family now.
Song lyrics from a song entitled The Suburbs (Continued) by Arcade fire said “If I could have it back, All the time that we wasted I’d only waste it again… You know I’ll love to waste it again waste it again and again and again.”. That is just how humans are. Even after being enlightened we still go back to our own ways. Just a few people emancipate from that inherent behaviour. Writing this article was quite challenging for me as I am no exception. I am running this same race trying to figure out a lot of things in my live just like everyone else. But I’m sure a lot of readers won’t want to wake up one morning 10 or 20 years from now and be regretting all the time you wasted. And the mistakes you made in your life for the rest of your life, till you eventually die of old age or drug abuse, suicide or whatever cause of death may befall you: May your soul rest in peace.
I will end right here, because I am myself incognizant about the outcome of life, neither am I perfect. However, I urge everyone to not lose hope and stay focussed.
