the dream thief
Once upon a time there was a boy who was the son of a horse trainer. The boy’s father was poor and had only a few resources to support his family and send the boy to school. One morning at school, while the boy was in class, the teacher asked the students to write down the goal they wanted to achieve by the time they were adults.
The young man wrote a seven-page essay that night outlining his goal. He wrote his dream in great detail and even drew a plan of the entire project: the ranch, the stables, the cattle ranch, the land and the house in which he wanted to live; in short, he put all his heart into the project and the next day he handed it in to the teacher.
Two days later, he received his failing paper back, and with a note that said, “Come see me after school.” The boy in the dream went to see his teacher and asked why he failed me? The teacher told him: “It is an unrealistic dream for a boy like you. You have no resources; you come from a poor family. To have what you want, you need many things and also a lot of money.
You have to buy the land, pay for the original breeding, and then you will have a lot of maintenance costs. There’s no way you could do it. Then the teacher added: if you do the work again with more realistic goals, I will reconsider your grade.”
The boy came home and thought hard. He also asked his father what he should do. He replied: “look son, you have to decide for yourself, anyway, I think it’s an important decision for you, right?”
Finally after reflecting for a week, the boy turned in the same paper, without making any changes.
He told the teacher: “You can keep my bad grade, I’ll keep my dream.”
At the end, the man looked at the children and said: “I tell you this story because it is my story. Here we are in the middle of the house of my dreams, inside the ranch that I set out to achieve because that was the goal of my life. I still have that homework from school framed over the fireplace.”
Then he added: “The best thing about the story is that two years ago, that same professor brought thirty boys to visit my ranch. And as he left the professor said to me: “Look, now I can tell you. When he was your teacher, he was kind of a dream stealer. During those years, I stole a lot of dreams from children. Luckily you were strong enough not to abandon yours.”
Let’s not let anyone steal our dreams, nor let us steal theirs from others.
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