Dear friends,
This Saturday we are discussing; Dreams do not pay the bills
Maybe it is one of our dreams that one day we won't need to pay any
bills. However, the topic is best understood as what it would take us to
be in a position where bills are not an issue in our life.
A caveat before I start is that I will assume that the dreams of the
topic involve money as one of their material condition. Of course, our
dreams can be many things but few involve directly our ability to pay
the bills in actual fact or metaphorically.
There are thus two clear strands of thought for this subject: the
linguistic perspective and, of course, the causal reality.
How should we understand the word –dream- in our context? As a sound
bite or a valuable meme the word dream has achieved a romantic currency.
Dreams are bigger, more challenging, more prestigious and certainly more
exclusive. To achieve the American dream is more than just having a car
in the drive. It's more like have a fleet of cars in the most
ostentatious house in the neighbourhood. Exclusivity creates prestige
and respect; these are what dreams are made of.
So what is the difference between wish, want, desire, ambition,
aspirations and so on?
Well dreams are big, dreams require effort and work but as I said what
we dream of are rare things and not easily obtainable. Everyone can
dream of owning the fastest sports car; and quite a few can have the
fastest sports car. But to dream of owning the factory that makes the
fastest sports car, that's a different story!
The essence of a dream it impossibility: a sense of impossibility to
achieve the dream and a sense of impossibility to be so different as to
achieve it. Achieving a dream might even be more difficult than winning
the lottery. As long as one keeps buying a ticket and no one tampers
with the lottery mechanism one can still win even if one does not
believe in luck, one understands the concepts of chances and probability
or maybe even forgets to check the ticket.
However, as soon as we stop believing in our dream the result is
obvious, if we do not put the maximum effort in our dream we'll never
achieve what is exclusive to be proud of. And yet randomness and bad
luck are risks facing our dreams 24/7. With a lottery we only need to be
lucky at the point the numbers are selected; the rest of the time we are
neither lucky nor unlucky.
Dreams therefore tend to require an effort from us that maybe is neither
so strong nor necessary when we want something or wish for something. A
wish to have a fast car might be a passing fad in our life, or maybe
when we wished for a faster car we couldn't afford a car. But maybe ten
years later we earn enough to make buying a fast car a non significant
event in our life. Not so with being the entrepreneur that manufactures
the fastest car; it takes more than money to realise the dream to
manufacture the fastest car.
The matter of causality is, therefore, important for our dreams because
we have more opportunities to fail than say wanting a fast car. Wanting
a fast car is a matter of money; manufacturing the fastest car is also a
matter of engineering skills, leadership, entrepreneurship, money
management, selecting the right team, understanding markets etc etc.
And maybe this is why dreams don't pay the bills. It is very easy for
our dreams to come to nothing because dreams are so complex that the
probability is very high that of one of the loops in the causal chain
breaking. Dreams not only have to survive our resolve, but more
importantly they have to survive the buffeting of empirical probability
otherwise known as life.
The irony is of course that should one day we realise our dream or
dreams we probably have someone else to worry about our bills.
Best Lawrence
tel: 606081813
philomadrid@gmail.com <mailto:philomadrid@gmail.com>
Blog: http://philomadrid.blogspot.com.es/
<http://philomadrid.blogspot.com.es/>
PhiloMadrid Meeting
Meet 6:30pm
Centro Segoviano
Alburquerque, 14
28010 Madrid
914457935
Metro: Bilbao
-----------Ignacio------------
Open Tertulia in English every
Thursdays at Triskel in c/San Vicente Ferrer 3.
Time: from 19:30 to 21h
http://sites.google.com/site/tertuliainenglishmadrid/
<http://sites.google.com/site/tertuliainenglishmadrid/>
----------------------------
from Lawrence, SATURDAY PhiloMadrid meeting at 6:30pm: Dreams do not pay
the bills
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