Keep Your Dreams Alive
Dr Vernon Coleman
When we are young we all have many dreams. We fantasise a lot about the future. We see ourselves becoming great painters, writers or sculptors. We envisage ourselves conquering the world as musicians, film stars or sporting heroes.
Gradually, as we get older, so our dreams are taken away from us.
People tell us that we must stop our day dreaming. They insist that we forget our fantasies, put aside our hopes and grow up into sensible, responsible, prosaic adulthood.
Society doesn’t like dreamers. Society wants us to adopt a practical role. Society doesn’t want people with their own visions for the future. Society likes us all to replace our personal visions for the future with simpler aspirations. Society wants us to put aside our dreams and forget all thoughts of romance and adventure. Society wants us to sell our souls for a small suburban house, a motor car and a gas fired barbecue in the garden.
Society needs workers and consumers not dreamers.
Society tells us that dreams are for children and society (in the person of school-teachers, parents and employers) tells us that as we grow older so we must settle for more modest, more practical hopes.
But the rewards society offers us in exchange for our dreams are trivial and tarnish quite quickly. The irony is that the rewards society offers are a sham; they will crumble in your fingers. Only dreams are real.
The truth is that to succeed, to survive and to be happy you must always hold your dreams close to your heart. Never let them go. The people who escape from their surroundings are the people who can dream. The prisoners who survive concentration camps are the ones who can envisage a world after imprisonment. It doesn’t matter what sort of world it is as long as it is a better world.
Ignore and resist the people who want to take away your dreams, ambitions and aspirations and who want to replace your dreams with ordinary satisfactions. Resist the pressure from those who want you to become a neat, productive human unit.
Keep your dreams close to you for as long as you live. Never let them go.
If your dreams are now but a distant part of your past, rescue them. Reach back into your memory and grab them. Try to remember what your dreams were when you were a teenager.
If you allow your dreams to disappear then you will become sad, dull, aimless and miserable. Your life will have no romance. You will be deprived of the sort of hope and vision with which you can combat misery, pain and depression.
However old you are, however long you live, never allow yourself to be parted from the dreams, ambitions and hopes you enjoyed when you were a child. And don’t be afraid to give your dreams substance and strength. Programme your dreams into your plans for your future.
When the boss of a large Japanese company was asked if his company had any long term goals he answered ‘yes’.
‘How far ahead do you plan?’ asked the questioner.
‘Two hundred and fifty years,’ answered the Japanese businessman.
‘What qualities do you need to carry out such long term plans?’ asked the startled questioner, more accustomed to two or maybe five year plans.
‘Patience,’ replied the Japanese businessman.
Remember that a goal is nothing more than a dream with a deadline. Write your dreams down. Vow today that you will do whatever you can to turn them into reality.
Vernon’s Law
You don’t have to realise your dreams to benefit from them. But you do have to keep them alive.
The above essay is taken from Vernon Coleman’s book `Toxic Stress’. To purchase a copy CLICK HERE or visit the bookshop on www.vernoncoleman.com
Copyright Vernon Coleman May 2025
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