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Posted Saturday 9th December 2023
Not the what-your-brain-does-when-you-are-sleeping kind, which are fascinating in both what they do and how they manifest, but the aspirational "dreams for the future" kind. English is such a clumsy language, it'd be great if there was a more obvious differentiation.
When I was 15, I wanted to move from small-town middle England to New Zealand and become a computer hacker and a psychotherapist. You know, one in the day and the other at night. Not sure when I thought I'd sleep. When I was 19, I wanted to go to college in the United States and live out my days making a difference to disadvantaged folk in small town America. Whilst doing cool programming stuff on the side. When I was 10 years old, I really wanted to own my own computer repair shop. By the age of 20, that dream had morphed into running my own datacentre, and being a psychotherapist part time in the evening. Then I got a job, realised that earning money was useful, and I realised that a more realistic dream was just being able to exist in the world. I conciously chose to be the most boring version of myself that I could.
The problem I've found is that it's hard to fulfil big dreams in a world that largely revolves around money and the idea of a job being the driving force in people's lives. Which, as a polymath and a generalist, is difficult - I do lots of different things, but in order to move to another country I either need a lot of money or I need an employer that's willing to sponsor me.
It's a question I ask myself more and more, particuarly since 2020. That's the year when not only did the world change as it reacted to a massive global pandemic, but several members of my family went through things that reminded me we only have one life to live and the time we have in which to live is often more fleeting than we want it to be. But you know what made my brain start churning on this even more than the response to COVID in 2020?
How can we ever effect change in the world if, whenever something big happens, we neither learn nor grow as a result of it? How can we ever hope to do the things we dream of doing if we don't start to distribute power and wealth more evenly? And why is it so hard to see a way out of this destructive level of capitalism while we're held captive in the middle of it?
I have dreams. I just hope I'm not waiting another 20 years to get the chance to fulfil any of them.
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