Last week my best friend’s daughter did her final surgical exam for her veterinarian’s degree. This woman has been a vegan since she was in kindergarten. As soon as she found out where meat came from, that was it. No more meat. 3 decades she has stuck to her guns and never wavered. Not a single day. I’ve never met another person so passionate about protecting animals to the degree that they have lived their entire life to that end since the age of 5. No compromise. Even as a small kid, she stood her ground and wouldn’t budge an inch on eating meat or animal products.
She was probably the last one to figure out she was meant to be a vet. She completed 2 degrees before the light finally went on. The rest of us have known her whole life. On the day her dream should have come true, her Prof decided to fail her because she thought she ‘didn’t handle the post-surgical conversation the way she would have done it.’ A Professor who has spent the past few months telling her that she’d never be any good, despite her results stating the exact opposite. So much for having professors who support and mentor their students for the exorbitant fees they charge… Well Prof, you don’t know her at all so we’ll see you at the appeal.
It has made me question how anyone could be so spiteful as to destroy someone’s dream, just because they have the power to do it. If it had been a failed surgical procedure, then absolutely. That’s a safety issue so fail away! But for no other reason than that their personalities didn’t gel?? How do you sleep at night knowing you have deliberately derailed someone’s life? Or do you have a good chuckle at your Machiavellian plan over a glass of wine?
How many small ways do we undermine people around us every day? Sometimes deliberately, other times unintentionally. When your kids, family, or friends tell you about their deepest dreams and hopes, do you give them encouragement, or laugh it off as ridiculous? Do you tell them to dream smaller or stop being so ambitious? Or worse, tell them to shut up? Small kids don’t have that veil of cynicism where everything is impossible. They still believe in positive outcomes so don’t be the dick who takes that away from them.
How many times have I done that? We say things for the sake of speaking without fully appreciating the impact it could have. Not everything is damaging to the degree above, but that doesn’t make it less significant. Instead, we create people who are too afraid to chase their dreams because they’re ‘not really that important.’ When you laugh off someone’s ‘pathetic little dream’, you break their spirit. Maybe permanently. Maybe they’ll never dream again because of you. To use a cliche, if you can’t say something nice, then say nothing at all. Constructive criticism is one thing if it’s to help someone improve, but picking away at someone to make them feel stupid for fun is a whole other ball of wax.
The world can be a pretty shit place; we’re hardly inundated in good news. That there are still souls out there who dream at all is a frikking miracle, considering the cesspool of bad news we inhabit. People who chase their dreams are doing something positive and constructive, and the world needs a lot more of that! Maybe their dream will make our lives a little better in the long run, who knows?
I’ve put mine in a safe box where my family can’t pick at it anymore. I’m tired of being told to suck it up and forget about going home. I’m tired of being told to ‘let it go.’ My dream is to go back to Scotland and I’ll get there. Someday. Not sure how just yet, but I’ll find a way and when I do, they’ll be the last to know.
Not everyone will support your vision but please, don’t stop chasing it. Don’t let someone with no imagination or hope diminish you. And if you don’t have a dream, don’t interrupt the people who do. If you’re not helping, you’re getting in the way and ain’t nobody got time for that.
