What Would the World Be Like Without People Who Followed Their Dreams?

I guess, essentially, this is what it really comes down to. Do you consider success a certain level of income; the lifestyle or chattels that money can buy?

Of course, we all need money - unless we're going to live very rustically, but is luxury and abundance your only measure of success?

If it is, then the likelihood is that you shouldn't follow your passion, unless your passion is to be a stockbroker or a lawyer or a dentist.

I'm not saying that a life of luxury cannot be gained from following your passion; of course it can. However, the road to that success may be a long one that requires hard work and much more persistence than you might otherwise need. That lifestyle you crave might not be easy to attain - realistically, it may even be impossible.

Which is why we come back to how you personally define success. My guess would be that, for most of us, it's much simpler than lots of money and possessions. I'd say, our most significant measure of success is happiness. And in order to find happiness, we must do what makes us happy. Sometimes, what makes us happiest, isn't what brings in the big bucks.

If the happiness you crave is the 'big bucks' and your dreams aren't taking you there, then follow the money along another path.

However, if your passions and dreams don't revolve around money and they're the only things that make you happy, then stick with them! Keep following those goals, even if it means having to do other things on the side to pay the bills, because success will come to you - even if 'success' is nothing more than the knowledge that you lived a life pursuing that something that sets your soul on fire. 

The fact of the matter is that is those people who dare to follow their dreams who have impacted our world the most profoundly. It's the writers, the artists, the musicians, the philosophers, the inventors  the poets - they are the ones who have shaped our modern societies.

They are also the people who give us motivation and inspiration to follow our own passions. So, I find myself wondering, what would the world be like without them? How much poorer would our lives be without those men and women who were brave (or just plain crazy) enough to ignore those who told them not to follow their dreams. 

Literature is, whether we realize it or not, a fundamental cornerstone of our society. It examines what it is to be human, it questions our morals and our systems of government. Aristotle believed the purpose of story-telling was not just to entertain, but to make us better people. 

So, what would the world be like without the likes of Emily Bronte, who struggled to find a publisher for Wuthering Heights and, during it's first print, was critically panned as vulgar. One reviewer from The Atlas wrote,

"Wuthering Heights is a strange, inartistic story. There are evidences in every chapter of a sort of rugged power—of unconscious strength—which the possessor seems never to think of turning to the best advantage. The general effect is inexpressibly painful. We know nothing in the whole range of our fictitious literature which presents such shocking pictures of the worst forms of humanity."

And then there's Sylvia Plath, who lived in the shadow of her significantly more commercially successful husband. Nevertheless, she kept writing and left us with a beautiful legacy of poetry.

Composing music, like any dream, can result in almost global recognition, as it did for the likes of Mozart and Beethoven. But, more often than not, as with the rest of the arts, music comes from those struggling to earn enough to pay for their next meal.

Pietro Mascagni wrote operas, but only one of them was ever a smash hit - Cavalleria Rusticana. He spent the subsequent fifty five years trying to repeat that success, but nothing quite matched it.

Toward the end of his life in post-war Rome, legend has it that a penniless Mascagni would travel from one G.I. camp to the next, begging for money; telling the soldiers that he was the one who wrote the aforementioned opera. Even those who weren't familiar with the piece as a whole, were aware of the intermezzo from it - a little number that's still as beautiful today as it was then.

Harriet Tubman said, "Every great dream begins with a dreamer. Always remember, you have within you the strength, the patience, and the passion to reach for the stars to change the world."

And where would we be without women like Harriet? What kind of world would will be living in without the courage and passion of the Pankhurst girls, without Martin Luther King Jr., or Ghandi or Mother Teresa or Nelson Mandela? 

These men and women didn't want fame or fortune. To them, success is and was something very different. We should be eternally grateful to people who were prepared to face danger, to be imprisoned and, in some case, killed in order to try and affect change in the world.

Now, I'm not suggesting that we can (or should) all choose such hefty battles. But whatever battle we pick, we should meet it head-on and never give up. Harriet Tubman was right, we're all much more powerful than most of us give ourselves credit for. It's not just that you can make a difference in the world, you will. You just have to decide what kind of difference that is.