Dream vs Reality

Most moms have this preternatural sense of knowing if their children are in trouble even without the children showing it. My mom is no different and she does this even while I was living in the US. She would call me up all of the sudden and ask if I was feeling fine as if she knew that I was stressed out with work and study. Right now she knows that I'm going through a tough emotional crisis even though I never once betray my emotions in-front of her. My mom and I are really close and we share almost every secrets between us but I never once told her that my heart has recently been broken and that I have been an emotional wreck for the past couple of weeks. She just knows. She asked me a few times if there's something wrong but I refused to divulge any info because I didn't want to make her worry about my emotional health. I just told her I'm fine and my life is just swell. But the other day, she just blurted this out of the blue: "You can't always get everything you want in life. Sometimes you have to make a serious compromise and just hope for the best!" Wow, I never knew my mom is a psychic but she is - with me at least.

So we ended up having a long talk about what we dream of having versus what we can realistically get. I told her that while I believe some compromise is important to act as an anchor that keeps our feet on the ground but there are also parts of the dream that we should not abandon and must pursue vigorously. Dream is what keeps us moving forward and gives meaning to our life. Accepting reality as a fate that cannot be changed means a complete surrender to a life as a zombie. Human beings are endowed with free will to change their fate if they choose to do so. It says so in the Qur'an. God will not change one's fate unless if the person strives to change it first.

Still on the subject of dream versus reality, she then asked me what I really look for in a woman, a question that she has asked me a zillion times before and one she already knew the answer to. I told her I'm looking for a woman who shares my passions in life and that I don't believe in opposite attraction. See, my mom and my dad are two diametrically opposite people whose personality differences are like night and day, and my mom likes to say that this is the reason why the marriage lasts for as long as it does. But I like to point out to her that the marriage almost collapsed twice because my dad is a wife-cheating two-timing bastard and what sustains the marriage until now is my mom's saint-like level of patience.

So back to what I look for in my dream girl. I told my mom that some criteria are just non-negotiable such as love for books and the outdoors. Everyone knows how much I love reading and spending time in the nature i.e. hiking, camping, swimming, mountain-biking, etc and for my future partner not to share these passions with me is simply unthinkable! I cannot imagine spending the rest of my life with someone who complains that I bury my nose in the books all the time and who hates spending time with me outside because the sun makes her skin dark, sweats profusely, dirty and simply unattractive. But I told my mom, in my experience, it's hard to find Malay girls like that and that's why I've been going out with American girls over the years. My mom then said maybe I will have to reconsider these criteria since not many Malay girls are like that and sometimes we cannot get everything we want in life. You see, my mom in her golden years are becoming more pessimistic and accepting of fate as a fait accompli. Or maybe she just wants me to settle down as soon as possible. But I replied that we can get everything or almost everything we want in this life only if we work hard enough to make it happen. Like I said before, God will not change our fate for us; only we can. And I was adamant when I told her for the umpteenth time that I WILL NOT settle down with a woman who hates reading and the outdoors. No way, Jose! There are no ands, ifs or buts...

On a general level, I believe that we should not abandon our dream just because it seems unattainable. The reality, although sucks, offers a sense of comfort and familiarity that most people see as barely tolerable and one they can try to live with for the rest of their life. But then these people are simply resigning to their alloted fate without even attempting to realize their dreams. Dreams, though exciting, imply the uncertainty of not knowing what lies ahead. But it is dreams that give us the sustenance to live and to progress as a humankind. Imagine what would happen if every human beings on this earth refuse to realize their dreams and just totally surrender to their fate (present reality)? There will be no Einstein, no Edison, no Wright brothers, no Darwin, no Galileo, no Da Vinci. Well, you get the point. Where would our human civilization be without dreamers trying to realize their dreams?

Realizing one's dreams requires hard work and the willingness to take risks, which most people are not prepared to do. Most people are afraid of the failure that can come with chasing dreams, so they rather stay put in their depressing but "safe" reality. But if we don't try then how do we know that we are going to fail or succeed? If we try and fail, at least we can look back and say that we did try our best to achieve our dreams but fate just would not have it any other way. I remember teaching my students in the pesantren the American idiom "shoulda coulda woulda," which means a person who regrets not doing something in the past which could have changed his/her present condition for the better. It then leads to another idiom, "there's no point in crying over spilled milk" since what's done is done. But what the idiom neglects to mention is that one can always wipe the table clean and buy a new carton of milk to replace the spilled one. It means that while God has assigned each individual his/her fate but with enough effort and determination one might be able to change the assigned fate. So let's not give up and surrender to our seriously compromised reality. Have faith in chasing our dreams in order to find a better future...