As the crow’s feet have grown longer and deeper on the sides of my blue eyes, I am reminded more and more of the dreams I had when I was younger, the harsh lessons of real life, and the recognition that many of those dreams will never take shape.
And I begin to consider the message that I, and millions of youth, received during our teenage years … the message that you can do anything you dream, that you can achieve the unachievable, reach the insurmountable. This inflated promise sets many up for failure, and we need to think twice before communicating it to our kids.
In actuality, our dreams are dependent on our resources, our abilities, our support systems, and a fair amount of serendipitous happenchance. Our dreams do not come to fruition just because they are noble, meaningful or strong. Or even, necessarily, because we work hard or we’re some kind of Einstein. They happen when they are reinforced by fate, friends and finances.
We would do better to teach our children the value of persistence, patience and keeping our options open. Ask any 40-year-old if they are in the place they had dreamed they would be when they were 19. Chances are you will get an answer that their lives are far different than they had ever imagined. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t living full lives.
The same applies to me. Born into an impoverished family on a dusty farm in central Alberta, I grew up in a home where the snow swept in under our front door and the rain dripped from the sagging ceiling. When my mom patched our pants and extended our sleeves on clothes, they lived just a little bit longer than they should have. Our milk was fresh from the cow, carefully drawn by my father, and our fruit was bruised and discarded, carefully pulled from the school garbage cans by my uncle, the janitor. I grew up in a home where one could not claim they had success without having integrity of character, nor strength without the experience of triumph over weakness.
It wasn’t dreaming impossible dreams, but it was deeply-rooted lessons of diligence and exploration that pushed my siblings and me out into lives of adventure, courage and determination. I have grown beyond expectations, accomplished far more than what could be imagined, and thrived far better than what might be expected. I may not have touched the stars that I reached for during my youth, but I have certainly traveled among them. I have gone further than I would have if I had believed the limitations of my circumstances and position.
It is this principle that we need to teach our children. Dreams are only images of what may be. But patience and intentional choices will take us to real places. We need to simply walk in the direction of what interests us, and in time, we will reach some of it.
By stretching oneself, extending beyond comfort; by making success secondary and failure a tool; by participating in the world and finding a place within it, we are free to live, rather than just imagine. We need to teach our youth to experience adversity, challenge, loss, and victory. To do otherwise would be a failure of our responsibility of training them as citizens of the real world.
Dee-Ann Schwanke is a masters student in international management.
