What’s your biggest dream?
In the following paragraphs, we will discuss and explore the concept of dreaming versus aspiration. While dreaming is a passive mental state that often lacks motivation, aspiration represents an internal drive to achieve goals. Aspirations ignite a competitive spirit, propelling individuals toward success, whereas daydreaming can lead to idle behaviour. Success results from the combination of deserving, desiring, and taking action, with failure serving as a crucial learning experience. The narrative emphasises the importance of directed efforts, contrasting proactive students with those seeking attention through protests. Ultimately, it advocates for recognising aspirations as powerful forces that enable personal and societal advancement.
Table of contents
Key Takeaways
- Dreaming is passive, while aspiration drives individuals towards achieving goals and success.
- Success relies on the combination of deserving, desiring, and taking action, while failure serves as a learning experience.
- Aspiration increases with every success, fostering healthy competition and resilience in the face of setbacks.
- Unlike dreaming, which can lead to idleness, aspiration is dynamic and leads to consistent effort and improvement.
- Youth must choose constructive paths over protests, recognizing that any aspiration can lead to achievement, regardless of background.
Dreaming
Dreaming is common and natural. It is a psychological aspect of life. Scientific studies have shown that Animals, particularly humans dream when they are in the REM (Rapid Eye Movement) stage of slumber. Humans are special in this regard too because it is they who usually remember their dream but it is still uncertain about animals.
Dreaming and Humans
Humans are special regarding dreaming in the sense that they are masters of dreaming with open eyes, even when they are not sleeping. This is daydreaming, which enables humans to imagine rosy things as they do during slumber. Animals probably don’t have this capability. (BBC)
Dream or Aspiration
The word “dream” is used for various purposes depending upon the context. A student, for example, “dream” to score excellent marks in their examination. Nonetheless, it is notable that this is not a dream. It is their aspiration. Thus, it draws a clear line between dream and aspiration.
Mental state and drive
A dream is a mental state that may or may not give inspiration, whereas aspiration is an internal drive to achieve a goal. It is a strong and purposeful desire to achieve a goal. A sportsperson aspires to excel in their performance and win a medal. It is their intense drive to stand on the podium with their national flag raised high in the background.
Aspiration increases
Aspiration increases with each success. A bronze medal winner aspires for gold. It is this flame that propels humans to perform better and excel. In a sense, it inculcates healthy competition and also teaches not to be disheartened in case of failure.
Dreams and Aspiration: Static or dynamic
Mostly, dreaming does not motivate. It simply causes a person to sit idle and dream of high and rosy things. Daydreaming is not creative or constructive. It wastes time which could be used to improve performance. A lion doesn’t get food sitting idly, doing nothing. It has to strategically chase and grab its prey as soon as the opportunity strikes.
Dreaming, thus is static and lifeless while aspiration is dynamic and full of life.
Deadly combo
The effort matters very much. Compounded with consistency, it gives good results. Consistency of effort is the natural outcome of aspiration. It is not unnatural that aspiration is long-lasting and contributes positively. Though aspiration and success often become a deadly combination. It leads to overambition. It is like soothing monsoon rain after scorching heat that gives a soul-pleasing sensation, but in excess it deluges and becomes a cause of widespread destruction.
Dreams and aspiration: Achiever or daydreamer
It is thus evident that aspiration has an edge over dreaming, which is imaginary. Aspiration to achieve motivates and fuels the passion, but a weak and timid try to ignore this aspect. A sluggish person with a lackadaisical approach can become a good daydreamer but not an achiever. It is the zeal, burning desire and ability to grab success that makes a person an achiever. The one who works under strenuous conditions can win. In case they lose, their spirits are high. They may become melancholic, but they don’t let it overpower them. Soon they get up, ready to fight back.
Three “D”s
Success comes to those who deserve, desire and do. It is the mantra of the three “D” s, which is the key to success. It is equally important to have an empty cell for failure as well. It’s important. Though unpalatable and negative, failure is an essential element which keeps a person grounded and does not allow the flatulent buoyancy of arrogance. Failure teaches the ways to self-improvement and tells about the sweetness of hard-earned success. It is disheartening and seems a daunting impediment, but it gives inner strength and power. The inner self comes out stronger after each failure. It is like a blast furnace which produces metal after removing impurities and slag.
Dreaming and aspiration: Experience teaches
The dreams are like shifting dunes of a desert. It is fleeting, which come and wash away with time, leaving an experience that every glittering thing is not gold. The experience teaches lessons of life. It is equally true that time doesn’t roll back. It moves unidirectionally forward. The experience helps another person; for those who experience things is a lesson for future occasions which may or may not repeat.
Experience and Learning
Humans learn either by their own experience or by following others in similar situations. Inventions and discoveries can be grouped under the latter category. Necessity gives rise to invention, which in turn leads to ambition, which drives humans to do more and get more. It helps humanity to grow and flourish. Human evolution is a saga of efforts, diligent hard work, consistent and persistent struggle for betterment and progress.
Humans evolved with experience and learning
Human evolution is an example of a burning urge to do something for common welfare. They learned to make fire, master the skill of tool-making and their use, excel in farming and develop community life. Their well-developed, cognizant brain was capable of thinking about and innovating things. The invention of the wheel in 3500 BC shows their ardent desire for betterment by an ambitious thought process, not by passively dreaming and enclosing themselves in a dream castle.
Achievements
Humans achieved new heights all around in every known field. They scaled the precipitous heights of mountains, fathomed the deep sea, ventured into space, landed on the moon and are nearing the sun to study it closely. These steps are the outcome of aspiration and structured toil. It took time, but the human race kept working without losing patience and deviating from its path.
Youths should choose wisely
The recent student agitation at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi presented two stark contrasts. It was the contrast of focused efforts versus colliding forces. Whereas the latter chose the path of collision and strife for a futile and fake demand, there were the students who opted to reappear in the examination. They studied hard, prepared themselves for the examination and succeeded with flying colours. They rightfully celebrated their success when the colliding faction was busy raising slogans by ludicrously dressed youths holding placards with obnoxious and abusive slogans.
Dignified and disciplined
People, especially youths, have to choose between right and wrong. Protesting may be a way, but that must be dignified and within limits. Youths are the future, and they must be able to differentiate between good and bad. Abusive and obnoxious statements demean them. Contrary to all this, there was a group of youths who chose a constructive path for their betterment and pride for their parents, government, society and the nation.
Big or small
No aspiration or “Dream” to say, is big or small, and no work is petty. A youth belonging to a poor family can go high with concerted efforts and honest work. Those who try to take a shortcut and adopt unfair means to succeed live in a fool’s paradise. Their illegitimate means rob the honest hard work of genuine aspirants. Using any unfair means must be dealt with an iron hand, and the government must see to it that honest hard workers do not feel cheated.
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Kamal Kishore Srivastava
A retired government officer turned writer and photographer, Kamal Kishore Srivastava is a regular blogger and essayist who explores life’s deeper meanings through immersive reflections on nature, impermanence, and happiness. On his blog Nature’s Narrative, he blends philosophical storytelling with practical insights. Writing 1,200–1,500 words or more regularly, Kamal is committed to refining his craft, expanding his audience, and building a sustainable space where thought and feeling intersect.
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