There are two types of people in this world, ones that stay indoors, sit around, and inherit all things that they may want or need. There is no desire or motivation in their lives. Then there are those who go out into the world and work hard for what they want using their God given talents. They succeed and fail, but they have a dream and a purpose to their lives. Life is hard for these people, and, most times, dreams do not come true. But what these people forget is that by setting goals and having dreams, they learn more about themselves through failure and life becomes easier to understand and can be appreciated. This is what I believe.
From the time I was very little, I had dreams and like most young children it was of becoming a hero like a professional sports star, a firefighter, a police officer, a doctor or an astronaut.
All my life, I have made goals like getting bigger and stronger, doing better in school. I have always tried to do my best in everything I do. I was never the best at my activities, but because I had fun doing them, I would learn more about myself. As I came close to reaching my goal, I would always try to set a higher goal. When I was accepted to Judge, one goal of mine was to pass my freshman year. Then it became to do well in school and participate in school activities, like sports. Now that I know I can do well in school, I want a new goal to be not only finishing school here, but being ready for college.
There is another boy who had a similar dream and goal about the University of Notre Dame. “Rudy” Rudiger loved Notre Dame Football. His dream was to one day play for the Fighting Irish, “I’m Green and Blue, through and through, he would say.” Rudy was not an all-star at football or a very good student. He could not even get into the school, let alone try out for the football team. But he was determined to play. He promised himself he would do anything. He got a job as a Notre Dame Stadium grounds keeper to support himself at school, he became a more serious student and improved his grade point average, and he worked out every day to stay in shape. It was a difficult journey to even be accepted to the high standard college of Notre Dame. Every year he applied to the University, he was rejected while attending near by Holy Cross College. He never gave up on his dream to play football on the Notre Dame field in front of a full stadium.
As I got older, I started separating my dreams from the outrageous ones to ones I thought I could achieve. I do this process every couple of months just as a writer writes a paper and then edits it to make it perfect, I adjust my goals so that I can see that I’m making progress and I make myself happy.
One day Rudy complains to his supervisor that his whole four years was wasted when he finds out he is not going to be allowed to play in the final game of his senior year. His supervisor tells him that he is a fool. “Don’t you see that you just got four years of the best damn education that money can buy and you had a chance to learn and grow with a championship caliber team? All you can think of is that you are not going to be able to play a little football.” Rudy realizes it was not the destination that was important, but the journey that made him stronger. He made himself stronger to be able to handle life, and strong enough to be ready for opportunities when they came to pass.
People have goals not matter if it is to win a title of an event or if it is to nicer to someone. These goals all have their own obstacles. When we learn how to over come these obstacles in our life we meet our aspirations, but more important we gain strength of character from experience and this character makes us who we are. So, life teaches us to have dreams, dreams give us direction. Set goals to accomplish your dream. Goals are like taking out little chunks of obstacles that are in the way of our dreams. Then we are taught to do our very best no matter what it is you are doing. When our work is done with an open mind and an open heart we become better people. We may or may not achieve our dreams, but often we become much more than whom we were when we started our journey.