Fears, Ambitions and Dreams

Almost whole of our lives are centered around fears, ambitions, and dreams. As kids, we have a fine balance of these three however, as we grow old, dreams become faint and fears grow stronger. What happens in the process is a matter of examination.

As kids, we all have dreams. Dreams of a fairyland, where everything is magical. Dreams of a free world where we do not need a Visa to visit any country, a world where there is no compulsion to become a doctor or an engineer and everybody may pursue his interests and hobbies, where there is no aggression and bullying and everybody is treated with fairness. A world that is full of love and we can be what we are truly and there is no space for fakeness and pretensions. Where we trust each other and open our hearts out to even strangers.

An adult may look at this dream world snobbishly and reject such a possibility to be childish. But what is the ideal world of an adult? A world that is full of desires for pleasures. A world wherein material objects give pleasure. Fat bank balance, powers, and properties coupled with the fear of losing them. Fear is just the other side of pleasure. The more we feel happy with accumulation, the more we have the fear of losing them. Deep-rooted in all these fears, adults have no courage left to even accept the possibilities of a dream world. Even the idea of a dream world appears to be uncomfortable to the adults and therefore they just want to kill the idea in the very beginning.

These adults, as parents and relatives, kill the dream world of the kids. They pass on their fears to the kids. They start brainwashing the kids that if they do not become doctors or engineers, they will be big failures. Kids initially rebel against these things but due to continuous reinforcement, they end up believing the falsity told to them by the entire society together. They develop a fear of failure. What if I fail an examination? What if my teachers do not like me? What if the parents are not satisfied with my performance? What if my friends reject me? Slowly with constant fear, these questions start turning into the mental stores about incompetence and the feeling that "I am not good enough". These stories are validated again and again by the elders constantly and soon fears leave no space for the dream world.

Fear does have a functional role. A plant needs protection so long as it is small so that the cows and buffaloes do not chew it. Similarly, kids are also vulnerable and therefore they need protection. However, that protection does not mean protection from the Sun. If we cover a plant in the name of protection, it will not get the sunlight and die very soon. Similarly, parents need to protect their kid's physical and mental vulnerabilities from coming into contact with evil people that may lure the innocent and do some permanent damage to the kids. That is why kids are told not to talk to strangers and take care of themselves. However, killing the dream world of the kids in the name of protection is not justified.

Kids also need to learn that there are dangers in society because all types of people are there in society. There are people who can harm an innocent for their small gain. This harm may have long-term impacts and therefore fear has a functional role. As a kid, sometimes we develop disinterest in studies and are not able to ascertain the causes of such disinterest. Sometimes this disinterest may be due to laziness, while at other times due to having ambitions not aligning with our nature. That is the reason why the teachers try to encourage the kids to study hard. In fact, our dreams are also limited by the exposure we get. A rocket scientist will have the dreams to go to Mars while a kid may have the dreams to ride on the kite. As we study and get experience of life, our dreams marry to reality. Imagination turns into projects. However, for that to happen, we need a solid foundation so that we can use the technology and explore the ideas and concepts that present-day scientists have already explored. We need to study to make our dreams turn true and not due to the fear of failure.

Since the world of adults is full of fear and desires, they develop ambitions. As money is the medium of exchange to get most of the pleasures in this world, therefore most of the ambitions of the adults center around money. The rest of the pleasures are taken care of by power and therefore there is a huge charm for power in present-day society. Parents have different ambitions, some fulfilled and the rest unfulfilled. The kids become their tools to achieve whatever they could not achieve in their lives. They pass on their unfulfilled ambitions to the kids. Ambitions give strength in the material world like the roots give strength to the plant. However, they have no utility beyond that. A tree with no trunk or leaves and only deep roots is of no use.

Therefore, we need to realize that fears have a functional role and we need to learn to keep them at the right place. We need to use our fears rather than fears using us. Similarly, ambitions have limited utility to manage the fears and have no utility beyond that. Ultimately, life is all about living a dream. Dreams give meaning to life while fears and ambitions are just means to achieve that end. We need petrol to run the car, so that we can drive around the world and see beautiful places. Petrol is just a means to make the car function and has no utility beyond that. Similarly, the role of fears and ambitions is just to protect this body and mind so that the same may be used to live a life of dreams.

Functional utility of fear

There is a functional utility of fear. For example, a child gets attracted to the fire initially, however, once he experiences the heat, he develops a natural instinct to take the hand away from the fire, as soon as the skin feels the heat.

Similarly, in the process of evolution, we have learned a lot of fears. For example, the fear of insects and wild animals. We used to live in the wilderness before the onset of civilization and there was a functional role of these fears. These fears helped humanity survive the attacks of wild animals and different diseases spread by the bites of insects.

As we started living in communities, living became more sophisticated and the nature of threats underwent a significant change. For example, we started living in concrete houses where the possibility of encountering wild animals or dangerous insects was almost eliminated. So, there was a functional utility of the fear of wild animals and insects in the pre-civilization era while there was very little functional utility of that fear as of date unless we traveled to the forest.

As communities grew, division of labour among the members of communities was promoted so as to ensure the smooth survival of the community as a whole. Communities devised formal and informal means to encourage people to perform their respective functions. Social validation was and continues to be a significant tool to ensure the smooth functioning of the respective roles by different members of the community.

We see a similar interplay of the social validation/peer validation phenomena in the small friend groups formed in the schools. Few kids form peer groups and slowly these peer groups develop their own informal rules of behaviour. Certain behaviours are strictly prohibited such as back-biting other members of the group with the class teacher. If any kid deviates, the group tries to ensure adherence to its rules by bullying such a kid. Similarly, the kids who obey the rules of the group are rewarded by allowing them to continue to be a part of the group and have fun with the other group members.

In the process, the fear of being expelled from the group takes over. This drives the behaviour of most kids from an early age. The same fear gets manifested in adults. They too keep confirming to their peers, friends, relatives, and to the society whole of their life without questioning the rhyme or reason of such rules. A similar fear is experienced in organizations where anybody deviating from the set behaviour pattern of the organization becomes an outcast.

Mental Stories of Fear

Thus, there is a functional utility of almost all fears. However, the problem starts when start making mental stories around the fears and multiply them as a result of which they lose touch with reality.

For example, most of the kids have fears for cockroaches and lizards. Cockroaches and lizards are generally harmless and the fear around them mostly gets formed by looking at the reactions of other kids. We don’t examine the reality of these fears and just imitate peer behaviour and make many mental stories around them. These stories keep frightening us the whole of our lives since there is no occasion to examine the reality ever and we keep believing as if these fears are real.

Similarly, we make a lot of stories about the mad dogs. The more we repeat these stories, the more real they look. For example, if a kid starts getting afraid of the dogs in his locality, he starts fearing every dog and every street even when there is no dog.

We wear shoes so as to prevent our feet from getting hurt by the stones and thorns. However, the right place for the shoes is on our feet and not on our heads. Similarly, fears have a functional utility to protect us from dangers. However, when we start making a mountain out of a molehill, then the problems start. Isn’t it like carrying the shoes on our heads? Rather than protecting our feet, the fears become a burden to us and prevent our rational thinking.

For example, roads are prone to accidents. There is no doubt about that. However, if we follow the safety rules, the dangers can be minimized. Not traveling at all, is not a solution. Getting afraid of driving makes us more vulnerable since our crucial attention is captured by the fear and we get to observe less on the road as we are distracted.

We place unreasonable restrictions on ourselves that prevent our growth.

Contextual background of fear

Not every dog is mad. Similarly, not all our fears are real. There is a background to everything and the problem is that we miss the background and correlate the fears to the present context. For example, we liked appreciation from our colleagues in a small school group and disliked being an outcast. The need for a group may be quite relevant in childhood since we have limited friends. However, while working in an organization, the context is quite different and the role of the colleagues is quite limited in our lives. Therefore, one needs to grow up to appreciate the difference in the context and behave differently. Many of the relationships in an organization may be purely functional. One can not always keep confirming the group expectations since that may have an impact on one’s job and promotion aspects. In a government organization, one will have to follow the rules, regulations, and code of conduct and if one conducts against these rules, due to peer pressure, that may have a significant impact on one’s career.

Similarly, many of the fears are not at all relevant in a context. For example, in the childhood we form many stories in and around God. If we do something, God will punish us. However, as we grow wiser, we realize that God is not there to punish us. Rather God is all pervasive. God is most compassionate and like any compassionate parent is not judgemental. He is there to support us in all our endeavours. However, when we know God is omniscient, the same God exists in all other kids and we would like others kids to grow as well. With such an understanding, why would we like to harm anybody? The fears in and around God are all ill founded and contextually relevant, as we realize the reality of God. There is no use of shoes inside the room. They are just for the roads and playground.

Fear is a result of narrowness: narrowness is a result of fear

Life is quite wide. We have a quite narrow perspective of life due to our ignorance of many aspects of life. That is the reason why we live fear-driven life. We cling to whatever limited we know. For example, kids know their family as the sole support system and therefore are afraid of their parents going away. Kids identify similarly with their peer groups and therefore are afraid to move away from their group. However, as they grow, they find many more friends and form more groups. They also see how broad life is.

We can equate it to the frog inside the well which has a very narrow perspective of the world as it sees from inside the well. That’s why almost all the fears and anxieties exist so long as we remain inside the well.

Cycle of fear

Thus, fear has a vicious cycle. For example, the fear of being bullied. Fear of being bullied by a schoolmate has a functional role in keeping us safe from evil persons. However, once we are bullied, we start making many more mental stories about the same: my friends will laugh at me, they will think I am weak, they will not appreciate me, they will outcast me, and so on. We become more and more frightened and a time comes when we limit ourselves and prevent our own growth.

Similarly, there is a cycle of fear of examinations. As examinations come near, we start becoming more and more fearful. We start making stories about our failure in the examinations and scolding from the parents and teachers being laughed at by the classmates and shattering of our dreams. We get lost in these stories. As a result, we start forgetting whatever we know and spoil our exams.

Putting fears in the right place

We do not know which person is a bully and which one is not. This means that when we try to make new friends, there are chances of being bullied. However, that does not mean that we will not make new friends at all. When we make new friends, we realize that most of our friends are good and not bullies. However, if we get trapped in the well of our fears, we will stop interacting with new people and our lives will become more and more limited and fears will bow out of proportion. Therefore, we need a remote control. Like the remote control of our air conditioners so that we can switch the AC on when we need it. This remote control is our awareness. Fear without awareness of the contextual background makes us dumb.

Similarly, as we start examining our fears of the examination, we find that many of the fears are ill-founded. It's just the hard work with concentration that is required to understand the subjects and clear the examination. With this awareness, we get the remote control of our fears. We keep them in the right place and concentrate on our studies.

What is ambition

We have discussed above that fear has a functional role in human life. Every fear has a contextual background in which it holds relevance. Fear is also a result of a narrow perspective like the perspective of the frog inside the well.

Humanity, whenever it could recognize, has fought hard to be free from fear. Ambition is like a bridge that takes us from the present to the desired future. However, the vision of the desired future is restricted by the narrowness of the perspective inside the well. Ambitions are like the bridges taking us from one place to the other.

Seed coming out of the shell

It's wonderful to see the growth of a plant from a seed. The seed in itself has all the possibilities, however, those possibilities are not manifested so long as the seed likes to stay protected inside the shelf. It is very limited till that time. We too are full of so many possibilities that we do not explore due to infinite fears. We feel safe in our family, and community and continuing the routine 10 to 5 job. We keep following certain rituals and live with a fixed mindset in the company of old friends and relatives. That's the life of a seed. It is a living being but in a dormant state oblivious of the possibilities it has.

When a seed goes inside the soil and gets water, it starts coming out of its shell. First of all, its roots develop and they start interacting with the soil. Then the root gets many branches and they too interact with the soil. It strengthens its grip in the soil.

Some of us decide to remain inside the shell throughout our lives and stay secure inside our routine denying the existence of death and one fine day caught unaware by the inevitable death. Some venture into the depths of the soil of this world and develop different ambitions to explore this world. Some try to set up entrepreneurship, some try to set up systems in the organizations, some try to gather power, some try to reform the societies, and some try to make sense of the soil by understanding the nature of the same and therefore devote their life for the accumulation of knowledge and information. In the process, we are acquiring skills, strengthening ourselves, and developing the capacity to face the world.

Journey of the seed inside the soil

The journey of ambitions inside the darkness of soil is necessary to prepare one for the journey in the world of light and it definitely gives one strength to stand tall when one comes out of the soil and commences his journey above the ground into the world of light. Yet, the journey inside the soil is just preparatory and therefore quite limited. Practice matches and exercises are necessary for a sportsman but a sportsman can not spend his entire life in the gym and practice field. The real fun is in playing the match on the ground. The real fun is when the seed comes out of the soil to experience the world of light and then starts interacting with the atmosphere.

Development of skills

Often, kids set their targets and ambitions in terms of percentage of marks in the examinations, clearing a particular competitive examination, or getting admission into a university of their choice. Often their ambitions are also driven by their limited exposure to life or the limited exposure of their parents. It's like the frog inside the well setting the ambitions within the well. Such a goal setting has its own role. Like the seed making efforts to gather strength inside the soil. The frog needs certain strength inside the well to come out of the well. So, like fear, ambitions have a functional role in life and set in the right context, can do wonders to give us strength and courage to live the life of our dreams.

However, the kids need to set their ambitions in terms of skill development rather than getting a particular percentage in the examination because of two reasons. Firstly, it is the skill that is going to help and strengthen them in life and not the marks at the end of the day. Secondly, if they take an interest in the subject and focus on building the skills, the marks will follow. After all, we do not set up a factory for the molasses rather we set up for sugar. Molasses is just a byproduct.

Grit

One of the leading thinkers of the day Angela Duckworth has given a concept called Grit. All the achievers in life, in each and every field of life, have one common quality and that is grit. Grit is a combination of passion and perseverance. When we have passion for something and follow that with perseverance, we become an expert in that field.

Passion for anything comes out of love and is the strongest driving force. For example, Einstein loved to know the secrets of nature and that love made him study quantum physics to know the deep secrets of nature. Similarly, Mahatma Gandhi loved their fellow human beings, and that made him feel their suffering and work for their independence. There are many sportsmen who loved the sports they played and their love for the games helped them achieve the feats that look quite impossible to achieve. There are artists like Leonardo Da Vinci who could paint a picture like Monalisa that is enviable for the best of the painters of the world as of the day.

Choosing the right path

In the entire process of life, what is the most crucial decision? It is choice of the center of life. If fears continue to remain the center of our lives, our lives will be narrow like a well.

On the other hand, if we set our dreams as the center of our lives, our lives can be as fulfilling as the life of the greatest personalities on this earth.

Dream

Ambition is necessary, but not sufficient to live a fulfilled life. The seed can strengthen itself as much as it wants inside the soil, but its purpose of existence is fulfilled only when the seed comes out of the soil and develops leaves. It's coming out of the soil is the journey from darkness to the light. Not only does it get the light, but it absorbs the dirty air from the atmosphere and starts converting that into pure air and in the process starts creating food not only for itself but to produce the fruits that can be eaten by all living beings. Thus, a seed that looked very weak and limited becomes the creator of fruits and multiple seeds that have the possibility of growing into trees again.

When a seed grows into a plant, it understands that the fears and insecurities, it had while being inside the shell, were limiting its existence to a very small fraction of what it is today. It also understands that the entire struggle inside the soil was worth the effort. However, so long as it was inside the shell as a seed, it could not have imagined its growth as a plant. So long as it was inside the soil, it could not have imagined its growth into the world of light. However, there is something inside the seed that gives it hope, to move along the path. It struggles to come out of the shell and come out of the darkness of the soil. The entire struggle is between that fear of losing the comfort that a seed has inside the shell and the hope that is intrinsic to the entire humanity.

Fulfilling life

We see the life of any person having a fulfilled life, and we would soon realize that they all have one common feature i.e. they have followed their dreams passionately and the rest of the things such as money and fame have followed them.

For example, let's see the life of Narayana Murthy. In 1981 he, with six software professionals, founded Infosys with an initial capital investment of Rs 10,000, which was provided by his wife Sudha Murty. He is an Indian billionaire businessman. He is one of the seven co-founders of Infosys, and has previously served as the chairman, chief executive officer (CEO), president, and chief mentor of the company before retiring and taking the title chairman emeritus. As of April 2023, his net worth was estimated to be $4.1 billion, making him the 711th richest person in the world according to Forbes.

He followed his dreams of building a software company of international standard and money and fame automatically followed him.

All the great sportsperson in the world have just followed their dreams and the rest of the things followed them. The same applies to the best writers in the world and the best artists. Similarly, the best of the scientific inventions have been done by the scientists who were in love with science.

When dreams drive our ambitions, life becomes very meaningful and the rest of the things automatically fall into place. For example, let us examine the life of Shri A P J Abul Kalam. In his school years, Kalam had average grades but was described as a bright and hardworking student who had a strong desire to learn. He spent hours on his studies, especially Mathematics. After completing his education at Schwartz Higher Secondary School, Ramanathapuram, Kalam went on to attend St. Joseph's College, Tiruchirappalli from where he graduated in Physics in 1954. He failed to realise his “dearest dream” of becoming an Indian Air Force (IAF) pilot but followed a bigger dream to explore the world of science to make his country a leader in the world of space science and rose to become the “people’s president”, a title he cherished, after steering the country’s missile programme to new heights.

Bill Gates, the richest man in the world dropped out of Harward University to follow what his heart desired and he founded Microsoft which we all know to be the largest software company in the world. Invited to the graduation ceremony at Harward, Gates reflected on “What does a college drop-out know about graduation?”. It is undeniably the passion and love for the subject that made Gates excel and not the fear-driven ambitions.

Similarly, Mark Zuckerberg, the father of social media, enrolled at Harvard University and started his two early platforms namely FaceMash and HarvardConnection.com. Once he realized his passion, there was no stopping him and he dropped out during his second year to focus on the development of Facebook. His career was driven by his dreams and passion and no wonder Facebook remains the biggest social media platform even today.

Stephen Hawking is regarded as one of the most brilliant theoretical physicists in history. His work on the origins and structure of the universe, from the Big Bang to black holes revolutionized the field, while his best-selling books have appealed to readers who may not have Hawkin’s scientific background. His passion for such a tough field is in the face of a life bound to a wheelchair and electronic voice. Hawking overcame a debilitating disease to push the boundaries of science and revolutionised our understanding of the universe only because of his passion and love for Physics.

Viktor Frankl was an Austrian neurologist and psychologist who founded what he called the field of “Logotherapy”. Logotherapy developed in and through Frankl's personal experience in the Theresienstadt Nazi concentration camp.

Frankl believed that suffering is not only an inevitable part of life but that finding meaning in suffering is essential. “If there is meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death”. He had to undergo the cruel concentration camps and while most of the people after getting relieved from the gas chambers of death suffered severe depression, Victor became a psychologist to treat many patients from the trauma and designed Logotherapy. It was his passion and perseverance that helped him live his dream world despite having passed through such unbearable pain.

Similarly, Mother Teressa became fascinated by stories of the lives of missionaries and their service in Bengal; by age 12, she was convinced that she should commit herself to religious life. She arrived in India in 1929 and began her novitiate in Darjeeling, in the lower Himalayas, where she learned Bengali and taught at St. Teresa's School near her convent. Her dedication to helping the poorest and sickest communities in Kolkata (then Calcutta) earned Mother Teresa widespread fame and numerous honors, including the 1979 Nobel Peace Prize.

J K Rowling always wanted to be a writer but chose to study French and the classics at the University of Exeter for practical reasons, influenced by her parents who thought job prospects would be better with evidence of bilingualism. She earned a BA in French from Exeter, graduating in 1987 after a year of study in Paris. She passed through a period of struggle but somehow continued to believe in her dreams and today everybody knows her as the author of the famous Harry Potter series.

As parents, our first and foremost responsibility is to help the kids dream. Dreams of a divine world. The driving force of their life should be these dreams. Knowingly or unknowingly the parents pass on their fears and unfulfilled ambitions to the kids. That kills the dream world of the kids and makes them full of fear for the rest of their lives. That limits the growth of the kids. Their life becomes narrow and limited and slowly they grow full of fears. If kids learn to stay aware and examine everything without these fears and biases, they will never lose touch with the truth and reality. That connection with reality will never let them close down and they will always stay connected to the dream world. Because the dream world is divine. The more people stay connected to that divine world, the more it will be a reality on this earth.

Aligning our ambitions with our dreams

We can see the journey of a seed in the video at the following YouTube link:

https://youtu.be/w77zPAtVTuI?si=p_fSdAG2mWkHCWz8

As we can see, the real journey of a seed begins when it comes out of the soil to connect to the world of light. It connects to light and air to make food not only for itself but also for so many other beings. The food strengthens its roots by giving them nutrition. That is the power of dreams. Once these dreams start guiding our lives, life becomes fulfilled and in the state of fulfillment, we start the process of distributing the happiness to everybody around.

If the seed remains inside the narrow shell, it will never be able to realize the vastness outside the soil. That is what we need to work on. Dreams world is real but looks quite impossible till we remain limited to our fears and fear-driven ambitions like the seed inside the soil. We need to work inside the soil to gain strength not to ally the fears but to connect to the dreams.

This connection requires faith. Faith is agnostic to the form. There is faith within all of us that we will see the light of the next day when we sleep in our bed. We have this intrinsic faith in life. Similarly, we have an intrinsic faith in growth and also our dream world. This faith gets clouded by fears. We just need to remind ourselves about the faith we all had as little children in ourselves and beyond to align our ambitions with our dreams. This is what all the great people referred to above did. They too must have had their share of fears. But they chose that faith in their passions and dream world to their fears and that made them great.

Fears make us narrow and make our entire lives very limited and shallow. Fears make us more fearful and this is a vicious cycle. Even if we achieve so many things following our ambitions based on fear, at the end of the day, we become more fearful. On the other hand, when our ambitions are dream-driven, the sky is the limit. A scientist has no limits to discover the truth behind different phenomena of nature, a writer has unlimited possibilities of creating his dream literature, a painter has unlimited possibilities with the paint and the brush, an entrepreneur has infinite possibilities to create wealth for himself, his society and the country to serve the entire humanity by making them prosperous and wealthy. It looks quite strange that why would one live an entire life inside the shell when there is so much in the offing. We just need to connect to the life.

Working on our fears, ambitions, and dreams

	Self-analysis of fear
1	Write down your fear
2	Is your fear protecting you from some danger? Write down the utility of the fear that you foresee.
3	Can you see any mental story around the fear? If yes: write down the same.
4	Had you not been afraid, you would have been free to do many more things. Write down restrictions due to fear.
	Self-analysis of ambitions
5	Write down your ambitions
6	Is ambition founded in some fear? If yes, what is the fear?
7	Is ambition founded in some desire? If yes, what is the desire?
8	What is your area of interest?
9	Had there been no fears, what ambitions would you have?
10	What is your dream world?
11	Suppose there are no fears, how would you live life in your dream world?
12	What ambitions would you have in a dream world?

Life

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