Dreams are meant to be unfinished

When I was just a little child, I read many books about the greatest people in the world. They were scientists, billionaires, activists, educators. People from all walks of life and all fields of knowledge. There were three particular things I found in common among these people: they had talent, passion, and money. The three big, great, and enviable things in the mind of a little child for a fairly simple reason: she did not have them, or had very little of them. There is something I learned from the business class back in high school called “diminishing marginal utility”. In simple words, this concept indicates that as a person has more of something, the satisfaction they gain from having one more piece of that thing also declines accordingly. Following this logic, the child we mentioned above might end up not wanting those big great things anymore when she’s grown up and earned an amount of [talent + passion + money] that she herself considered enough. But by any means, this is a hypothesis, meaning it remains to be tested. Because that child, who is literally me myself, has not grown up enough yet to earn enough of those things so as to lose any desire for them. I am, merely, 20 years old on Earth.

Alongside those three great things, I actually had much more concrete dreams throughout my 20 years of life. For example, when I was in kindergarten, I wanted to be an artist. So much so that I sneaked into the art class after school even though my mother did not sign up, or pay, for it. That happened for a month or two when I got caught by the teacher and kicked out of the class. Obviously, she did not literally kick me, but I could not learn drawing anymore since then. And perhaps my dream of becoming an artist started fading away from that moment. 

That dream changed into a job in the medical field when I got into primary school. After watching a film series about life and work of some doctors, I quickly pictured myself as a neurosurgeon, saving lives and performing very complicated techniques on the human brain. The dream stayed for quite a long time, and fortunately this time no one kicked it out of my life. Everyone was cheerful when hearing about my massive plan on how I would become a doctor: studying really well and behaving appropriately in class. My mom was especially enthusiastic about that prospect, saying how proud she would be if one of her children became a doctor one day. Somehow, the dream still disappeared towards the end of primary school for a reason I could not fathom. It’s not like one day I woke up and decided not to be a neurosurgeon anymore. There was something more happening in the background of my mind that drove me away from that dream. Much later on, when studying Psychology at university, I sometimes intended to pursue psychiatry. However, it’s never a really strong desire like when I was an eight-year-old. I suppose, the more I grow up, the more I crave instant gratifications. Therefore, I’m simply no longer willing to wait years and years for my dream to get its compensation. Or maybe it’s just because my Chemistry grades were miserable and I did not even attempt to save them. 

Secondary school came, the structure of my dream went through some significant changes. I did not just dream about who I would become eventually, but what specific goals I wanted to achieve. Towards the end of year 7, I wanted to take the IELTS test (International English Language Testing System) and aimed to get a 7.5. Frankly, that was a pretty crazy idea because my English skills were barely at beginner level when the goal was set. So, I told my parents that I would put less effort into school work that year to focus on this goal instead. I also warned them about a dramatic drop in my academic performance. Thinking about that now, making a leap in my English skills was probably not as hard as facing the disappointment from others when my grade report came out. I still remember the head teacher called my parents and asked if my family just went through any unfortunate events. It is also because of this experience that I learned something about my parents: although they rarely showed much support for my decisions, they gave me the freedom to do what I decided to do, as long as I would stick to it and work hard to earn that right. Another thing I learned is that: being a “bad” student was not as bad as I imagined it to be. Becoming less excellent in studies quickly changed the dynamic of my friendships. I befriended some students I never spoke to before and held certain prejudice against. They were, surprisingly, decent human beings with their own hobbies and interests, which just happened not to be academic studies. For a thirteen-year-old who had nothing to do other than studying, trust me, that was a big discovery. It taught me to respect differences, stay humble, and most importantly, understand that the journey to success varied greatly among people.

At fifteen, I suddenly got interested in writing. It was originally journalling because I just had so much on my mind all the time that I needed a way to store and reflect on those thoughts later. But somehow, that turned into blogging, writing competitions, and contributing to local newspapers. Actually, the very first amounts of money I earned were from writing and the very first coach I had was a writing coach. We would meet for three hours every week at a random café amidst the crowded streets of Hanoi, spending most of the time critiquing the pieces that I wrote and constructing the outlines for my next ones. I enjoyed writing many different genres, from poems, documentary, to non-fiction and highly academic essays. For a consecutive three-years, I usually caught myself daydreaming about becoming a worldwide famous author and almost applied for a Creative Writing degree in my university application. Even after firmly getting enrolled at University College London as a Psychology student, I still ran to Norwich on a random Monday to talk to the admissions director at University of East Anglia, when I learned that the school held an excellent Literature and Creative Writing undergraduate programme. And yet, after all those dramatic moves and gigantic dreams, the writing dream did not persist. I no longer want to be a writer, not because I lost any enjoyment in the act of writing. But reality killed my dream, or more accurately, I let reality kill it. Soon I realised working as an author full-time could not earn me a living. The truth is not nice to hear but it is still the truth. 

High school was when my dreaming activity became stagnant. All of my time and energy were consumed by studies, exams, and preparations for a new chapter in my life, university. When the application time came, I decided to study Psychology and Education. The decision was made not because I wanted to become a psychologist nor an educator. It was made because I realised, I could dream and learn and dare to explore the world indeed because of all the education I had been receiving in my life. Every single person and experience I had bonded with and gone through, they gave me something educational. And I grew up a bit every day thanks to those lessons I collected along the way. Therefore, when choosing to study Psychology and Education, I dreamt of something bigger, perhaps the biggest dream I ever had: To learn something that allows me to learn everything – about myself and about the world. 

We may imagine life as a string of dreams. In that simile, all dreams are somehow connected to each other. As we become older, usually when the perceived educational period ends at the age of 20s, we feel the pressure to stop being dreamers and start actualising those dreams. That also means there are dreams we can bring with us into the future, and others we must leave behind. Sometimes, I wondered if those dreams I left behind had died. Or they’ve transformed into something completely new, or have become a part of the dream I’m now pursuing. When I met my writing coach again this Summer, on a humid August day amidst Hanoi’s Old Square, we sipped coffee and chatted about the goals we always wanted to achieve. We realised a lot of things we thought we must give up on, have gradually come back to each of us. It took her a decade to actually start her own business. And for me, a few years to come back to writing, something I thought I could not continue “because this would lead to nowhere”. Other than talent, passion, and money, it finally appeared to me that in any dreamer’s successful story, there are much more that they aspire to other than the [talent + passion + money] formula I created at the age of six. And it is only the dreamers themselves who can do justice for the dreams want to actualise, as long as they don’t give them up and dare to finish them one day.   

Dreams, perhaps many dreams, are meant to be unfinished. So that one day, you can come back and finish them later. One by one. 

BY LYNN NG.