Pursuing your dreams isn’t easy. As any dreamer, any person who has ever followed that arduous and rocky road to your goals and desires knows, in life you meet a lot of obstacles.
Doubters.
Nay-sayers.
People who think that you’re crazy: that your idea will never work, that it’s impossible. And many, many times, with hard work and perseverance, these obstacles can be overcome, these nonbelievers shown up.
This was not one of those times.
Growing up, I had a dream to fly to the moon and stars. When I was just a young boy my father would take me out into the field and we would lie in the cool, soft grass and watch the stars twinkle in the unreachable distance. He would trace out constellations with his finger, giving each one a shape, a name, and I would tell him, “I’m going to go there one day, dad. You’ll see. I’ll build a big spaceship, one that runs on toothpaste, and I’ll fly among the stars.” It sounded crazy: but it was so crazy, that is just might work.
My dad would smile, pat me on the back as only a loving father can, and simply say, “lol are you totally nuts that’ll never work.”
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| The basic concept is no different from any other rocket engine. |
As I grew up, the dream grew. I knew that my dad was wrong, even if he was factually correct. Every night I would spend countless hours in the basement, working until daybreak drawing up rough sketches of how this magnificent machine would work. I would show them, I told myself. I would show them all.
Looking back, I realise, boy, toothpaste isn’t really a great combustible substance.
I eventually dropped out of school to work on my invention. “You’re wasting your life!” my physics teacher screamed at me as I walked out the school entrance, slamming the doors on all the negativity and scepticism that was my daily experience. “Seriously, in terms of actual real-life physical possibility, you won’t succeed.”
They doubted me. They thought I was crazy. “It’ll never work,” they said. “Toothpaste is not a reliable, energy-efficient or economically viable fuel,” they told me.They were right.
“You’re wrong!” I shouted back with a laugh, knowing that one day I’d prove her and all the jeering children and staff at my school wrong by zooming off into outer space, leaving nothing but a long, minty-fresh contrail in my wake. Of course it was only years later, as I sat in the basement looking over my blueprints after my 983rd failed launch, that I realised they were right - but does that really matter?
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| Is my dream really so far-fetched? Why should the "medical knowledge" of "clinical psychiatrists" dissuade us? |
And so I worked, day and night. There was no sacrifice I considered too great. A series of failed girlfriends and relationships came and went. I missed my father’s funeral. My brother and I fell out of contact. My dog died. I think I forgot to feed him. I wonder if dogs can eat toothpaste.
But through it all, I’ve learnt a valuable lesson: you have to follow your dreams. Well, that, and also that the cost per ounce versus combustion potential of Colgate makes it an impractical choice of fuel.
Life is full of disappointments and setbacks. It’s chock-a-block packed with so-called “friends” and “family” who think your dreams are impossible, are too big, will never work, are contrary to the very principles of rocket science.
And sometimes you’ve got to cut this negativity from your life.
It’s hard, I know. When I first told my sister, “I have dreams, ambitions; the lizard people watch us - they know all. A new utopia of greenery and prosperity await, in hidden Xanadu-esque caverns buried hundreds of kilometres below Mar’s rocky plains,” well, it wasn’t easy to look her in the eye and summon up the courage to defend my dreams and say, “you’re family, why won’t you support my dreams, it’s probably the brain-leeches the Zerngions injected into you as a foetus seriously you should go for a professional defogulation and invest in aluminium cerebro-brainwave protector.”
Work hard. Believe. Ignore the nay-sayers and scientists.
Because nothing should ever stand between you and your dreams. Not even a straitjacket.
