A friend forwarded some newspaper clipping wherein an author is saying that the "follow your dreams" being encouraged by few motivators is actually based on survivor bias. We see only a few who have failed to follow their dreams and a majority of whom we know are the ones who have successfully followed their dreams. That is why we get biased and decide to "follow our dreams".
That appears to me quite a narrow and restricted view of life. Are we following our dreams to get the comforts and pleasures? Is there any motive behind our dreams? We just enjoy our dreams. Did Einstien dream of unraveling the mysteries of the universe to get money and power? Did Stephen Hawkins dream of understanding the mysteries of the black holes and parallel universe to have money and power? He can not even properly stand and yet despite all his physical limitations he dreamed to know the mysteries of the universe. That is because he loved to do that. People who have never experienced love in their life, and keep running after one or the other ambitions, probably can never understand what love means. After all, a monkey does not understand the taste of ginger.
Once we love something or someone and live life for love, where is the question of dissatisfaction. Radha and Gopis loved Krishna but they could never get Krishna since Krishna moved to Mathura and after that never returned to Brij. Did that make the lives of Gopis meaningless? Definitely, the life of Gopis was not pleasant. They would have been happy with Krishna. However, once somebody falls in love, the rest of the options cease to exist. Where is the comparison in such a state? Probably, we keep calculating the benefits of dreams because we never have dreams. If somebody has dreams there is no calculation. We have become so narrow in our worldview that probably we can not appreciate the value of dreams to the one who has dreams. It is only after having experienced true love, we can understand the love of Radha and the sacrifice Krishna and Radha made. For the rest, it was a very bad deal. Only Krishna and Radha know that given an option in the next life, they will again fall in love even if that is for a little period.
The traders do not understand the value of a paintbrush for a kid who loves to paint. They value it for a few pennies. For the kid who loves painting, that brush is more valuable than his life. We are not talking about emotions here. We are talking of that connection with the brush. Only lucky ones get to connect with their dreams and once that connection is established, there is no evaluation. Somebody who has not loved Sita like Rama would consider Rama to be a fool to keep searching for Rama for months and take so much pain to find her and bring her back.
Many of us are still in a mode of survival. In the process of evolution, we grew from single-cell animals to human beings. Even the single-cell creatures have a strong survival instinct. If we too live just for survival, what is the difference between the single cell creatures and us? We have a brain in the process of evolution. The human brain is a wonderful tool. It can connect us with each other through emotions. It has also appreciated logic. the most wonderful capacity of the human brain is to understand and appreciate what it can not feel with senses and understand with logic. It has the capacity to challenge its own limitations and connect to the "Wider". That connection opens it up to altogether new possibilities that appear to be just dreams for the one who can not feel them. That is why for a person engrossed with the matter, dreams are rubbish and for a person who lives a life of dreams, the person calculating the pros and cons of a dream world is just like an animal who has not evolved beyond the primitive state.
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