PERSONAL SPECIAL....How Big is Your Dream?

How Big is Your Dream?

'I was a great dreamer. But today, when people ask me, what's your greatest mistake, i say, my dream was too small. I recommend to young people whose world it is today - dream big, do not hesitate. The greater your dreams, the more you can achieve.' Said Nobel Laureate Shimon Peres, iconic statesman and President of Israel from 2007-14, to The Times of India in an interesting interview. These words hit home. Very hard. I began to ask myself if I was dreaming enough, dreaming BIG enough. And just how big should your dream really be? Here was a man who had already acted on his dream of peace...and it seemed big enough! Still he wasn't satisfied. He regretted not dreaming a bigger dream.  Why? Because when your dream includes others, it only gets bigger. When you want to bring about change, initiate peace, bring countries and people together, or create a new future...the dream is never too big. And the dream never ends. Mahatma Gandhi once said, 'I want to see India free in my life-time.  But God may not consider me fit enough to see the dream of my life fulfilled. Then I shall quarrel, not with Him but with myself.'  Gandhiji worked tirelessly till the end of his life to realise his dream of seeing a free India. In this he also had humility -- he felt he needed to make himself worthy enough in the eyes of God. Because at the end of it, if you haven't realised your dreams, there is no one to blame, no one to fight with, but you and you alone. These words sound deep, intangible and difficult to grasp. So let's simplify them. The first step is to dream. Big or small. Let's at least start dreaming. What exactly is a dream? How do you differentiate it from other transient thoughts, desires, ambitions, or goals? Abdul Kalam described it well: 'Dream is not that which you see while  sleeping, it is something that does not let you sleep.' A dream is that which makes you restless, takes away your peace, doesn't leave you alone. It's this nagging voice in your head that doesn't stop talking...till you begin to give it expression. The next step then is to start crystallising that dream, because without  complete clarity, you cannot start working on your dream. Once you have articulated your dream for yourself, only then can you make it your single-pointed mission. In the early years of his career, Sachin Tendulkar was driven by one single thought: 'The only thing that was on my mind was, "I want to play for India one day," and I was pretty sure and confident  that one day I will.' Once you believe in your dream, you do all it takes to put it in motion. You stretch your limits, learn new skills, and work on becoming more  capable. A dream helps you rise, because falling or lowering your standards is just not an option. As Swami Vivekananda rightly said: 'Do not lower your goals to the level of your abilities. Instead, raise your abilities to the height of  your goals.' A dream makes you adventurous, it makes you go where you haven't gone before. A dream gives you an unstoppable energy and positivity to overcome your own limitations and that of your environment. And a dream brings you closer to others. It makes you see unity where there was none. It shows you patterns where there were only dots. Collaboration is a by-product of dreams. Because without holding the hands of others, little can be achieved, even for yourself. A dream by its very nature will make you realise the importance of the other. It will automatically bring humility, it will aid cooperation.  To quote Nelson Mandela: 'If you want the cooperation of humans around  you, you must make them feel they are important - and you do that by being genuine and humble.' If your dream is genuine, if it accounts for the well-being of others and if your commitment to it is genuine, you will get all the support you need  from the people in your life. The bottomline then is that a dream, even an individual one, needs to  benefit others, it needs to help others grow, it needs to account for the whole world.  But, of course, you can make a difference in small steps. As long as you're making incremental changes one day at a time, impacting 'one person at a time' you will slowly realise your dream. Mother Teresa advised: 'Never worry about numbers. Help one person at a time and always start with the person nearest you.' Thus, acting on our dreams is paramount, in any small or big way. The dream itself may be big, sometimes difficult to fathom, but the steps taken toward achieving it may be tiny. You may start out being the only hero of your dream, and finally the whole world will have a part to play in it as well. The scope of our dreams is not for us to determine. Our job is just to dream...and dream big. Because your dream belongs to the world.  Ritika Bajaj   .