Real Dreams and Surreal Success

The post by De Maitre, what’s stopping you from pursing your dreams?,was very inspiring. The issues raised were also worthy of further exploration and discussion.

For instance, the determination of the kiwi to fly, despite its apparent inability to do so, and the possible reasons why we are hindered from achieving our dreams.

Let’s start with the reasons why.

What’s stopping us from achieving our dreams? De Maitre has identified two reasons: culture and the fear of risks.

The impact on culture on the pursuit of dreams is obvious. Cultural predispositions set expectations on ourselves which we may not want. It’s a problem especially experienced by the Chinese community, because the Chinese are influenced by thousands of years of Confucianism to value education, not for its own sake, but for the purpose of gaining material and social success.

Stories about how talented artists were forced to be engineers or doctors or lawyers, and the Arts and Social Science student put down in front of his/her Law cousin in a family visit, says a lot of the ideas that these families have regarding success.

Culture has robbed many of their free choice, and denied them from pursuing their own dreams. They are living dreams not of their own, but that of their parents.

I think the reason why Singaporeans fear risk is because our society has a low tolerance for failure. Mr Lee Kuan Yew, for example, is celebrated because he got it right. Everyone else who failed was relegated to the “dustbin of history”. To make things worse, people attach stigmas onto these people, further demoralising them.

Take for example, the attitude towards bankrupts. Singaporeans tended to think of them as failures, and are even robbed of “privileges” like a ride on a taxi, but in the US for example, they are given a second chance to restructure their business, and start over. It is interesting to note that some of the most successful people in history used to be bankrupts, like the great Henry Ford himself.


But the pursuit of dreams is one thing, the means to get to it another. Stories of people who were unscrupulous in their aim to get rich abound. The recent case of Madoff is the exemplar.

It reminds me of a parable from the Chinese philosopher Zhuang-zi:

There was a man who hated his footprints and shadow. He hated them so much he decided to run away from them. But the more he ran, the more footprints there were, and the faster he ran, the faster his shadow caught up with him. Eventually he died of exhaustion.

Zhuang-zi commented: what a foolish man! All he had to do was to lie down under a shady tree, and both footprints and shadow will disappear!

What is moral of the story? It’s quite simple. Sometimes the pursuit of our dreams requires the least of effort. In fact, the more we try too hard, the less likely we are to achieve it. When death or punishment is at our doorstep, whatever we have done would be meaningless.

In fact, it kind of reminds me of that poor kiwi. It so desperately wanted to fly; it was prepared to die for it. It had a real dream, but the success was so surreal.

Perhaps this is a reflection of our own society, where we have the illusion of flight, when we are actually in freefall?