Following your dreams?

by Isuri Erandathi Ratnaweera

What is it like to dream, to follow our dreams and live to see them come true? Dreams add colour to our life and our heart overflows with sheer joy to see our dreams come true. One can choose to just dream or one can work hard to achieve their dreams. Dreams are an integral part of one's life and they make our living experience better, day by day. It is because of people who have dreamt and made their dreams a reality, the world is such a wonderful and a possible place to live after all.

Achieving one's dreams might not only have an effect on the individual himself, but it will also have an impact on the people around him. Dreams of certain people can possible change the whole course of a country. Effort of an individual itself will not be sufficient to help make a dream come true. One needs assistance and support from various sources to make one's dreams come true. Our parents stand in the forefront and their support is essential in realising our dreams.

While some parents are very much supportive of the decisions their children make, there are parents who want to live the life of their child. They want to achieve what they couldn't achieve back in their life through their own children. They completely forget the fact that their child is another separate individual. They don't realise that whatever they are doing in that manner is a very selfish act. The major problem that most of the children face today are that their parents oppose or interfere against the decisions what they want to make of their future and their decisions have to be made according to that of their parents. This act of parents is very wrong and it must be totally disagreed.

Experiences

The main thing what today's parents think is that they have gained more experiences in life than their children. Just give some thought on how you added those experiences to your life. If you yourself haven't had any freedom in taking decisions and to think, would you be in this position today? It is because of those experiences that you have collected in the earlier days, you have become successful in life today. Experience is a great teacher and it adds many things to our book of life and we become mature through our experiences. So why are you hindering your child's chance to experience more things? Instead of living the life of your child, what you must do is to teach and guide your child to discover his inner self and help him through his difficult times. Though you think you are right, you are doing more harm to your child if you act in this way.

Fearful

Your child might start to think that your presence in this world is forever, which is not. They will be weak in the face of the society. Some will be fearful people in the society who are timid and scared to face challenges in life. At one point in their lives when you will be gone, they will be lost and will have nowhere to look up for. It's best to stay by their side to help them take their own decisions and to follow the right track.

A child is a very precious thing and as they grow up to be the citizens of tomorrow, they take decisions which are suitable for them and as parents, and you must support their decisions. Nowadays, its parents who decide what their child will do for their A/L's, what they want to become in life, will they go for higher studies, and so on. What you choose, does that have to be the only option for you child? After all it's not you who is going to deal with all those decisions and live their life, it's all up to them.

If he/she walked in their own pathway, today they would've been very happy and successful people in their lives. But it will take you a lot of time to realise or you might not realise at all that your decisions were responsible for creating this uproar in your family. Not only your child, but you including the whole family will suffer too.

It will be too late to realise all this and correct the mistakes. The root cause to all these problems were just one reason.

Whatever you decide must not be an option for them because they have their own ideas, views, visions and dreams in life and they are waiting for them to be achieved. We are living in a very competitive social backdrop and some parents will try to push their children to become overachievers and pressurize them to run far above the others, leaving others behind. Children will get exhausted running this race and may eventually get mentally as well as physically deteriorated.

We have a great lesson to learn from nature that is if we help a struggling caterpillar to come out of the cocoon in the process where it becomes a butterfly, it will cause the death of the butterfly. The caterpillar has to struggle to become a butterfly and explore the world.

The important lesson here is that we have let our children struggle and handle their problems.

It will prepare them for their flight. Struggles in life makes us stronger. An individual must struggle himself to overcome a problem. Period of being a child comes only once in a lifetime and after becoming an adult, the experiences he/she gained during the childhood will be put to test.

Those experiences will mould up his character for his betterment and will make him a talented and an intelligent child.

Child

Therefore dear parents, don't clip the wings of your child, instead be the wind beneath their wings. Let your child take on his own course. Hold his hands and be there for him. Let him run, let him make mistakes and let him fall while running, but think twice before him up. Give him the chance to look at the world through his own eyes. Life is a journey where you stumble and fall, and each time they fall, teach them to get up with more strength.

Teach them to believe in their heart and to chase after their dreams. Let them make mistakes because mistakes are the foremost steps to success. And at last let them go and let them fly to their own destinations. One may be more successful as a musician than an engineer or a doctor. A country can't move forward if the whole population in it becomes doctors and engineers. Everybody have their own set of dreams.

Late president of India Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam once said "Those who cannot work with their hearts achieve but a hollow, halfhearted success that breeds bitterness all around". If people have to become successful, they have to love what they do and to love what they do, they have to follow their heart.

Behind many successful and influential people of the world, there is a family which have always been there as a great pillar of strength. Their families have supported their decisions and respected them. Children of supportive parents have flourished as great leaders and inspiring people. Your joy will know no bounds and you will be exhilarating with joy and shedding tears of joy as parents to see your children achieve greater heights and make their way through their dreams.

They will never forget your love and support as supportive parents. If you want to see that day become a reality, then let your children follow their heart and their dreams. People with various dreams will make this world so colourful and what a nice place this would be if we all were so different!