darkholme

my dream(s)

Word of warning - I never feel that I'm a good writer, so please excuse my lack of writing skill/style. Thanks.

It's a little late in the night for me to be up, considering that I am going to be up again at 5am (I hope) to go for the 3km run at Kranji, but I have not been able to sleep. This is due to the fact that I have been thinking a lot about my own answer to the question that I posed - "What are you dreaming of?" I wanted to know what you are dreaming of, or dreamt of doing when you/we were young. Hopes, aspirations, dreams.

I must firstly thank shannatic for being the first brave soul to contribute to this meme. Like she said, it's no simple task and like her, I have been thinking about this since I first posed the question to myself and to all of you.

I originally tried to think of all the things that one dreams of becoming when one is a kid. You know, the usual stuff like fireman, policeman, superman (heh). Then I realised that I actually never wanted to be any of these things. I guess that there must have been some point in time where I wanted to be a Transformer (the robot-type not electrical-type), and that's how the notion of "play" comes about. We dream of something, or desire something and "play" our dream out.

I abandoned this thread of thought somewhere along the line and then picked it up again and this time, focused on the dreams I had growing up as a teenager. At that time, I really wanted to be in a rock band, playing lead guitar and being cool. I remember that I actually didn't wasn't so keen on making good music, but rather becoming a rock icon like Slash in Guns 'n' Roses. When I picked up theatre in Sec 1, I knew that this was something that I would be close to for the rest of my life. My dream then was to go to VJC and do Theatre Studies and Drama (which I eventually did.) Other dreams of course revolved around being accepted and also day-dreaming about pretty girls and such. :)

I actually really never knew what I wanted to do with my life, and mainly played by ear most of the time. Either that or just making decisions based on gut feel. That made me think that maybe I didn't have any dreams. This was the moment where I became a little depressed. There were all these people around me that had dreams, had aspirations and were working towards fulfilling their dreams, whether it be setting up their own company, being a musician, or getting married. I then started asking myself - Do I have dreams? What are they? Am I just clueless running around not really having any direction in life and spending too much time in the here and now. I started to panic and fear that I had no direction, no dreams. This got me really down and I have been down recently, if some of you who see me might have noticed. I was afraid that I was dream-less and as such passion-less.

Then tonight, whilst listening to Colin and Yen Yen on the mr brown show, I came to some sort of enlightenment. Well, maybe not enlightenment, but some possible answer to my lack of an obvious direction or dream.

If I may be so bold as to say this - I believe that my dream is to make other people's dreams come true. This would explain why there seems to be a lack of a personal dream in the conventional sense. I definitely do not dream of being a rich, well to do business type person or married with kids (at least not yet.) I don't dream of saving kids in third world countries or being a rockstar. I don't dream of driving a fancy sports car or owning many man credit cards. What I actually do is I love supporting other people's dreams.

Why do I say that? Listening to the mr brown podcast tonight reminded me of how Colin and Yen Yen were telling me that they are worried about how Singapore Dreaming will do in the cinemas. This is after all their dream and if no one supports the film, it will probably be a dream dashed. I'm not sure if I heard and interpreted what Colin and Yen Yen have been saying over all media and over the phone to me, but I get a strong feeling of stress and the exhaustion from their working so hard on promoting their film which may just die in the box office this weekend.

I want so badly for their film to do well, not only because I think that it's a great film, but that it represents something larger for a Singaporean audience and for me personally. It symbolises the fact that someone had a dream and put in their heart and soul and time and money into it. I want that dream to succeed. I want my friend Saiful's band The Great Spy Experiment to do well. I want Daphne's dream of being in theatre to come true. I want to do whatever I can to make their dreams come true. My dream is to make their dreams succeed, even if it is at the expense of myself sometimes.

I realise that I may sound like a dream-hog or dream-parasite and you might say that I should
get my own dreams, but to be honest, I love making people's dreams become reality. Maybe that is my mission in life and that is what I want to do with my life.

I'm not sure just yet whether I've amanged to hit the nail in the target, but I will keep on exploring and thinking of all of this. Thank you for reading.

posted by kelvin @ 1:38 am