The Start Of Another Day: Chapter V
By A.H.Z
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CHAPTER V: Hopes and Dreams
Dreams and goals are another thing that we all have in common but deal with in very different ways; many people will choose to chase after their dreams until the very end, while others seem to think that doing so is childish and unrealistic, I for one believe that dreams, or hope in general, is a very sharp double edged sword, it can make your life better as much as it can ruin your happiness. Focusing on one thing in life to the point of obsession and having high hopes for it to be a life changer for you –or having tunnel vision as I like to call it – could potentially be very harmful to you since you start paying less attention to other life experiences that might be more beneficial to you, as well as being more enjoyable, which is why I personally prefer constantly exploring new fields and searching for new life experiences that I might enjoy gaining over sticking to one field and only focusing on improving my competences in it, which of course has its benefits; it is also important to note that if you practice a sport (or any activity really) solely because the idea of being “good” at it makes you happy, more often than not, you would find yourself unhappy because you would sometimes fail to meet your own expectations especially if you set them very high.
“The Hero Syndrome” as I like to call it, is something that I and many other people have had to deal with at one point in our lives, it could be described as an intense desire to always be viewed in a positive light or in similar terms, as a “good” person or as a “good” player or both, which causes you to have social anxiety and an insecurity over how people view you, not only that, it also pushes you to have extremely high expectations whenever you make any small amount of progress or a slight success. This insecurity makes you feel extremely flattered whenever someone compliments you on something you judge as being important to you (which is an indication of someone having issues accepting himself as a person and believing in his own competences/deficiencies instead of relying on other people’s judgement to determine his level of proficiency in something, not that you have to find out your level of proficiency in anything really, your skill level is what it is after all), someone that has this “syndrome” for example, starts dreaming about being an international skateboarding champion, and believing that everyone will acknowledge him and admire him after that, the moment he manages to pull off an average stunt - him knowing full well that it is average mind you - , which then sets him up for immeasurable disappointment when he decides to instantly skip steps and try to perform a much more complicated stunt, when he fails, it feels like the end of the world for him ,which would lead him to quit skateboarding all together. The worst part about this “Hero Syndrome” in my opinion is that it turns you into a very judgmental person, this is much more comprehensible through an example, let’s suppose that you’re watching a movie where the main character does something morally questionable, if you had this “syndrome”, chances are you would have the following phrase to say whenever that happens :” if I were in his shoes , I would do much much better and everyone would appreciate me ,since I’m a good person“, while in reality, saying that you really aspire to be acknowledged as a “good” person, would be a much more accurate statement. People with this syndrome tend to always view themselves as “Heroes” in their fantasies, it’s as if they want to be the protagonists of reality, which is often because they can’t fully accept the person they came to be, and thus they have to create an imaginary version of themselves that they can project themselves into. Another point I wanted to address is the fact that sometimes in life, you may feel that you need to be “good” at everything or else the sky would come crashing down straight into your head, in moments like those, something that really helped me out was avoiding to label my expertise levels in everything, instead of saying that I am bad at something or that I’m really good , I say that I am exactly what I am, it doesn’t matter if I’m good or bad by people’s standards (or my standards for that matter ), sometimes I can do relatively well, other times I do not, it would take much more words than good, bad, or average to describe my level of expertise in anything, I should focus on improving as long as I enjoy this activity or as long as this activity brings consequences that I desire( or at least, I think that I desire ).
Logically speaking, no matter what dream you have, you should always keep in mind that there is a chance that you will be unable to achieve it, in reality though, it’s not just about keeping in it in your mind, it’s about deeply believing in it and accepting it, which is something relatively hard to do, to make it easier on yourself, you have to acknowledge that you can never predict the events that are going to occur in your life a hundred percent: there will always be unexpected ones interfering with it, who knows if after achieving your life long goals you’ll finally find happiness, stability and more importantly satisfaction? Perhaps something entirely different could happen, making you desire something else in life that would bring you much more joy; this same type of logic is what led me to think that no matter what decisions you make in life, you should never regret them, because first of all, that is only going to worsen your situation and make you more prone to making decisions that are going to compromise your happiness even more, and second of all, the reason why we feel bad after a decision we made gives birth to undesirable consequences(such as pushing you farther away from your goals) is so that we wouldn’t make a similar decision to this one, therefore, an even better alternative to just letting yourself feel overwhelmed by regret, is thinking logically and preventing this outcome from occurring once again. I find that we sometimes give decisions way too much importance than what we should actually give them, because sometimes it really doesn’t matter that much if you can’t even semi-accurately predict what is going to happen in the future, however, you should always weigh the pros and cons of your choices for what you think works best for you in every decision.
Trying to predict the future to make the “best” decisions in life sometimes is not only unrealistic, but also very tiring and counterproductive if done constantly, you’ll find yourself overthinking most of the time which is a very bad habit to get into, I remember that from the moment I got accepted into my university, I kept setting up what I should strive and work hard for in order to achieve “my ideal future”, which led me to the conclusion of wanting to study abroad in the US after finishing my first semester, (which is not only very unlikely since transferring to a US university from an Algerian one is a very complicated procedure but also something that is very time consuming ) which then caused me to have a very early burnout since I was simultaneously preparing for my semester finals, and standardized tests, only to realize in the end that I wasn’t so sure about wanting to continue my studies in the US after all.
“Never Give Up!” the all famous expression you’re probably all familiar with, an expression that is in some page of almost every personal development book; I take a very neutral stance concerning the “you should never give up “mentality, the fact is, that mentality is based off of a generalization, which means that it probably isn’t the holy grail of philosophy and will definitely not be applicable everywhere, sometimes it is much more relieving for people to abandon their dreams that caused them so much anguish and sadness because they were so unattainable in search for simpler more realistic means to be happy. In my opinion, the best time to give up on something is when you don’t have a lot of time invested in it, for example, if you’ve recently started guitar courses but you found out that you hated them and that the idea of being a guitarist isn’t as appealing to you as it was before starting the courses, then in my opinion you should give up on those courses, however this is not to be confused with giving up because of hardships; what could be considered a solution to this whole problem of giving up is evaluating whether your desired goal for pursuing an activity(having fun ,gaining new life experience…) or aspect is worth its disadvantages (time consuming activity , potentially dangerous…..) and decide based on your personal preferences before you get into this activity or after a relatively short time from your application; if you’ve invested a lot of time into something and plan to quit because of the rising difficulty or competitiveness then you should evaluate whether surmounting those difficulties is worth the trouble or not, after taking a short break to clear your head if possible; every person has different views and mentalities, and it would be unfair to say that you should never give up if you’re close to your target, since many people do so and do not regret it in the slightest. Most people will tell you that you’ll “waste” your past efforts if you give up in the middle of something, for me however, a more accurate expression would be “ waste your efforts in regards of that competition” because even if you give up halfway, you would have still gained experience, even if in a smaller amount, and that small amount of experience might prove to be useful later on in life, even quitting out of a sport because of competitiveness is an experience on its own. No experience goes to waste, it just changes forms, for example, the fact that I cancelled my study abroad procedure (even though I invested so much time into revising for the standardized tests) made me realize that being too hasty or trying to “outsmart the system” by doing everything to have an idealistic life style will probably not work out for me.
In a modern society, being ambitious and having “big dreams “ is generally well regarded ( how many people do you know would write “humble” instead of “ambitious” in their resume or say it in their job interview? The answer would often be some number close to zero), the down side to this is that many times having humble and simple dreams is brushed off as just being lazy and uncreative, which definitely should not be the case, whatever it is that we are talking about, you should always remember that generally speaking, different things work for different people, even if a specific method tends to work for more people than another, so always pick what suits you best.
This is not to say that you should never chase after your goals and dreams, in the contrary, I encourage you to do so if you truly desire achieving them and that you are fully aware of the hardships that might occur on the way of realizing them, however, you should never dismiss the chances of you changing your views nor should you feel that your happiness depends on your dreams and your dreams alone, yes you can be anything you want in life, but a more accurate expression is that you can be anything really, not necessarily something you would want in your current state.
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