Holding on to your big dreams

 

Matthew Green going home & await a transplant after surgeons at Papworth Hospital in Cambridgeshire replaced his heart with an implant.

When I left my well paid public sector job last year, the easy option would have been to set myself up as a consultant in regeneration management/project management, or rehousing management.  Each of which I was fully versed in and would have earned me the big bucks.  However something deep down inside of me was moving in a different direction.  This wasn't the work I wanted to do.  It wasn’t where my passion lay.  I wanted to make the biggest difference possible.  

I am totally fed up with the way things are so I want to change the world! I want to make it fairer, end hunger, herald world peace!  Yes they are big dreams.  These are my big dreams.

Have you noticed, the moment you vocalise your big dreams, just how many people there are standing in line, waiting for their chance to talk you down from the window ledge on the tower block of your imagination. Well-meaning family, friend and associates, who see it as a dangerous place to be.  What would happen to you if you fell off and went crashing towards the ground? You’d be killed and if by some miracle you survived, you’d be broken, paralysed, your life as you know it would be over.  No it’s their role to protect you from your “dangerous” big dreams.  

What is your biggest dream? What do you most want to do in the world, no matter how impossible it seems at the moment?  Me, as I said, I want to change the world.  I'm so fed up of hearing about all the needless, mindless, senseless violence, of the hunger, the wars, the starvation.  

Is it just me or do you feel like shouting?: 

“Hey its 2011 why are we still behaving like this?  Aren't we supposed to be highly intelligent rational beings?  Come on now – why are we still killing each other?  Why are we still watching people starved to death? Why are people being mutilated and tortured simply for holding different views?  Surely this is not who we truly are. Surely we are better than this now?” 

Perhaps not!  Maybe I am an idealist. You can't imagine how many people have said this to me over the years.  However, it’s still my big dream - to change the world!

My husband thinks I'm the world's best problem solver.  From his viewpoint, solutions come to me easily.  In reality, it's not that they come easily, sometimes they do sometimes they don't. What is actually happening is that I just don't give up.  Once I get it into my head that there is a solution to be had, I simply refuse to let it go until I come up with something that works.  This may mean that like Edison, I have to try thousands of different options.  Each time modifying my next step based on the feedback from the previous one.  All the while adding in reference material from my arsenal of information accumulated during my 49 years and 330 days on the planet (not to mention the knowledge handed down through generations by DNA and instinct).  So I guess that's why I'm still hoping to change the world.  My tenacity just won't let me drop it.

My advice: don't be easily persuaded out of your big dreams no matter how implausible they may seem.  

Imagine you're one of the team who has decided to land on the moon. Or you are Dr Christian Barnard dreaming of being able to replace diseased hearts with healthy donor ones. Today I heard about a 40-year-old man who became the first person to leave hospital with an artificial heart.  Wow that's amazing! His battery powered plastic heart is giving him the time he needs to find a suitable donor and the opportunity to leave hospital and spend time with his family. 

 

All of these were somebody's big dream and I'm sure that they had to fight past the line of people trying to talk them back into their senses.  Your big dream could be the next big gift to the world; you owe it to yourself and more importantly, to us to see it through.