"If your dreams don't scare you, they're not big enough."
-Miguel Diaz, SEO Scholars Program Class of 2014,
Franklin & Marshall College Class of 2018
Ah, these kids today! What do they know?!? Yep, as a father of three teenagers and a mentor to hundreds of young summer interns (and to thousands of them over the years), I've said this many times. In fact, I say it often still. And, much as I prefer not to acknowledge it most of the time, I know the answer: a lot. Maybe not about the stuff that we adults think they should know - or, at least, based on their behavior at times, not in the way that we think they should know it - but the reality is that our children and young people do know a lot ... and likely a lot more than we did at their age.
Take, for instance, young Mr. Diaz, whom I quoted above: what does he know? Well, as I listened to him share this and other nuggets of wisdom with his fellow graduates of the Sponsors for Educational Opportunity (high school) Scholars Program Class of 2014, I thought to myself, "Apparently, a lot!" And yet I wondered if he really knew/fully appreciated what he had just shared. Does he understand how profound a suggestion his is?, I wondered to myself.
I was tempted in my adult all-knowingness to assume that he didn't. Immediately, I was filled with thoughts like, "Why, if this kid really understood what he was saying, he'd know that life's not necessarily about dreams but about playing the hand that it deals you in the best way that you can at the time and over time." Or "Sure, at your age, you can say that because you don't know how truly scary life can be." Etc.
And after a few of these self-reassuring and -satisfied justifications, a new reality dawned on me: As the British used to say in my youth, "By jove, I think he's got it!" In fact, this 18-year old has clarity on something many - and probably far too many - of us 'adults' have forgotten or unlearned long ago: life is indeed about dreams, about pursuing them passionately and especially about pursuing them courageously.
How many of us who've been around for a while get up every day truly trying to live our dreams? How many of us gave up on our dreams long ago and settled for something meaningful enough but not quite enough to ignite our passions fully? How many of us don't think that dreams are appropriate any more for adults who have commitments like marriages, families, mortgages, kids' tuitions, elders for whom to care, etc.?
How many of us even know what our dreams are (anymore)?
For too many of us, life has taught us that dreams are nice but (too) costly. We appreciate the blessings that we have (more or less), but we don't fight passionately to create fully the vision that we have (or once had) and thereby to create the world anew as we believe that it should be. We bemoan our fate globally and socially - we remind ourselves that the world is so screwed up and in some ways getting worse on our watch - and confine our focus to the daily life of the loving commitments that we've already made - both personal/familial and professional/communal - at, what it turns out, is the cost of our dreams. We've been taught by life in its inevitable travails and occasional triumphs to focus on the possible, not on making the impossible happen/making infinite possibilities real. And therein lies our mistake, a mistake that young Mr. Diaz and his fellow SEO grads have yet to make ... and, we pray, that they never will....
Dr. M. Scott Peck, author of the classic book The Road Less Traveled, defines courage thusly:
Courage is not the absence of fear; it is the making of action in spite of fear,
the moving out against the resistance engendered by fear into the unknown and into the future.
What life has taught most of us adults is that the pursuit of dreams can be and usually is supremely costly. Consequently, we are more constrained by fear than our children are. They don't know better yet - in large part because we've endeavored successfully to shield them from many (if not most) of life's harsher realities - and thus they have the privilege of dreaming ... while we have the responsibility of living, especially of living up to our commitments. Or so we tell ourselves....
In fairness, Mr. Diaz's youthful ambition is not yet fully tempered by the world, but let's hope that it never is, because therein lies a lesson for those of us who are a few (or even many) years further down life's road: Why can't we dream? Why don't we dream (anymore)? There are indeed a million (good) reasons why we can't just drop everything and do what we dreamed long ago or even what we secretly dream of today. Yet there are a million and one reasons why we should, especially that, as far as we know, we only get this one trip through life. Simply put, if we don't live our dreams now/in this life, when will we?
This is the lesson that Mr. Diaz taught me (and, presumably, many of the other adults in the admiring audience) earlier this week: whatever your age, whatever your circumstances, dream big and pursue them courageously. After all, for those of us much older than Mr. Diaz, presumably, we have less time to do so, so our pursuit should be the most passionate and courageous of all....
Courage is a funny thing: most of us believe ourselves to have it, and yet, if we examine our lives more closely, we'll find that our definition of courage and Dr. Peck's diverge greatly and to our detriment. It is indeed courageous to take on all of the commitments that we do over the course of a lifetime; yet it is the opposite of courageousness to allow these commitments to distract us from the simultaneous pursuit of our dreams or, even worse, to extinguish those dreams altogether.
If I've learned anything from mentoring young people in the past 30 years, it is exactly this: that from the mouths of babes, from the minds and hearts of those we would presume to lead and instruct, often comes wisdom that we ourselves need to regain or, in some cases, to learn for the first time. Simply put, as much as I've supposedly been teaching, I've learned even more....
I was raised by my family - and especially by my mother - and by the Jesuits at U of D High School to be a "Man for Others." In my young adult life, I was fortunate to come to know, to be developed by and to be presented the opportunity to contribute meaningfully to SEO (Sponsors for Educational Opportunity). SEO gave me the first break in my adult professional life, an internship on Wall Street, and I found a career. SEO also gave me the first break in my adult personal life, an opportunity to serve, and I found a calling....
As much as Mr. Diaz's challenge was aimed at his 18-year old peers, it actually was an even bigger one to those whose lifespans can be measured in multiples of his. I pay tribute to him today in this meditation because, once again, he has proven one of life's greatest lessons: that the teacher often learns much (if not more) from the student.
And what a meaningful lesson his is: to live fully, to be scared by what we dream and yet (to have the courage) to pursue it passionately in spite of this fear, as if the cost of this pursuit will not matter nearly as much as the rewards of doing so. Because, as so many of us have forgotten in our 'maturity,' it won't: the real living is in the journey, not in the reaching of the goal. Indeed, the point of living is to make the unreal real, to create the world anew in our own unique ways, to strive and in this striving to grow, to contribute and in this contribution to forge a legacy, to achieve and to fail and in this achievement and failure to live fully into whomever our Maker has created us to be....
Every day going forward I will remind myself to be scared for the right reason - not because I'm worried about failing but because I'm awed by the profundity of the possibilities that await and tempt me - and I will have one of my students, young Mr. Diaz, to thank.
What are your dreams? Are they big enough? Do they scare you? And what young person in your life will remind and inspire you to live them fully today and every day?
