The Dream Snatchers

It is bad. It shouldn’t happen. It’s theft, is what it is. I wonder if it’s a cultural phenomenon, peculiar to certain parts and cultures of the world. But I’m happy to leave the labelling and geography alone. It’s not that important. What’s important is exposing the crime. Yes, it may sound harsh, but that’s what it is.

It’s when one realises or tries to realise their own dreams via another. When you put it down this way, in writing, the “craziness” of the project becomes obvious. Obviously your dreams belong only to you. How can you achieve them through another? It’s a crime in two equally painful parts, or two crimes in one. The second offence is that you are stealing another’s dream.

Dreams drive us, they help us swim upstream, fly against the cross winds. To me, dreams should be as compulsive as our own breath or heartbeat, and entirely our own. Compulsions are bad, but some you need for life, to survive and thrive. I have heard stories which I wish I hadn’t. Some children leaving their dreams and lives on the train tracks, just because they couldn’t fulfill their parents’ dreams, couldn’t realise their parents’ ambitions. They pay a priceless price for a cost that was never theirs. Deaths or are these murders? Just one or two more marks, and they could have sent their parents to medical college. Medicine, or rather being a doctor is a prestige, not a vocation for some Asian parents (Yikes! I said it). Either you inherit the baton from an illustrious gene pool that has produced a horde of drop-dead boring professionals before you or you must create one for the first time.

Perhaps another Beethoven, Dickens or Picasso lies a mangled mess on the train tracks. A flower cut down before it could truly bloom. Now this is just an example, a rare one where the price was bloody. But of course taking their own lives is never, ever the answer, there is no excuse, common sense is a natural gift that requires no deliberations. Life is too precious, regardless whether you fail to clear your own bar or someone else’s. But killing dreams, stealing them has a price. Just the same as unveiling and expanding our own genius is priceless. I highlighted a truth close to our hearts, closest to our homes, that which can warp filial affections and more horridly that which we impose on ourselves. Can we stop? Dream snatching on the grand scale is timeless, war, famine, dictators, poverty, they just don’t stop at killing dreams, they kill the innocent carriers as well.

This narrative is a reminder to myself, and a written pledge to my kids. I have raised the bar and I pray that I can honour it. If not, I am at risk of hypocrisy and I hate hypocrites. I would hate to hate myself.