Do We Really Need Long Term Dreams?

A question that always hang in my mind: do we really need long term dreams?

Ever since we were little, lots of influential people taught us to dream big. To really chase our dream. To give our best effort to make our dreams come true.

I vividly remember when I was younger, I forced myself to have a dream. I set my goals and transformed them into a plan and concrete actions. But i also realized that those weren’t my genuine dreams. I only set them because of society dictates everyone to dream big. When those dreams i had previously set did not came true, i was actually totally okay with it. More than okay, I was grateful.

Then I started to think again: do we really need long term dreams?

Well in that case, I finally pictured myself as a go-with-the-flow person. It is okay to not have long term dreams. It is okay to not have a long list of plans to make our dreams we set come true. It is okay to not be able to see a version of yourself in the next 10 years. It is okay to not follow society’s standards and simply just do what feels right. It is okay to be our self in our very own way.

For the record, I'm not saying that it is okay to not have a concrete plan when we already know what we want (or need) to achieve. For example, when we know that we want to survive in life, to be able to invest our idle money, or to support the needs of our family, then we must definitely have a concrete financial plan. But if being the president of our country or being a billionaire in the age of 35 is not what we want, then i think it's okay to not plan to be one.

But the thing that I have to emphasize in the regards of the concept of "not having a long term dreams" is: responsibility. Career path we have, the person we ended up with, the amount of friends we keep, the titles we chase, the house we bought, or even just the color of the shirt for today's work, and basically every single thing in our life must come along with responsibility. I also believe that each and everything is already destined for us, so whatever we choose, as long as we're being responsible, we're going to be fine. (I realized what I wrote sounds very optimistic, but I believe it's true).

This is my thought as per today but I'm still open to new perspectives. Maybe I'll learn something afterwards and I'm excited about it.

Cheers!