Follow your dreams and reach for the stars (or a bucket).

Everyone has a dream. To be the next Susan Boyle. To open their own pasta restaurant. To sail around the world in a small pink boat. To win an Oscar. To marry Orlando Bloom (too late). And pop culture certainly seems rather fixated with helping everyone achieve those dreams or at least to share them with the world and cry in public before going back to their regular lives.

So is it helpful or just bloody indulgent to place all this emphasis on reaching for the stars and chasing your dreams? If you are a parent should you be encouraging your child to dream big and pursue their heart’s desire?

Or is it more helpful to suggest they take a cold shower and go get a job?

Wendy Harmer recently wrote about this in the Sunday Telegraph. In part she wrote:

” Right now you can’t swing a bloody cane toad in this wide, brown land without hitting a dream. Every teary TV talent show contestant’s got one. They want their own restaurants, tapas bars, dance academies, fashion lines and recording contracts.Often they’re no more than vain, selfish hopes or childish wishes – no more noble than a scratchie ticket or a punt on winning Oz Lotto’s “truckload of cash”. For millions of losers it’s a car boot full of disappointment and, let’s face it, every week there are an awful lot of losers.

Chasing a personal dream is not the virtuous thing it’s made out to be. More often than not it’s an egotistical confidence trick. In our dreams we’re more intelligent, attractive and younger than when we’re awake, and sometimes letting go of a dream is actually the bravest thing we can do.

Isn’t it better to pursue the opportunities that present in the waking hours? Flexibility, compromise, a realistic appraisal of our talents and capabilities are all more useful strategies for success than dreams.

But I always admire someone who dares, who has a vision and doesn’t rely on a game of chance to achieve it.

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Not everyone can fulfil their dreams, can they? And there are many good reasons for this. If we were all chasing our dreams who would deliver the mail (maybe someone whose dream it was to have a job where they got lots of exercise and spent their day outdoors)? Who would collect the garbage and do all the other un-dreamlike but totally necessary and perfectly respectable things that need to be done in order to make a living?

Do you think we all need to get over this obsession with dreams and have more realistic expectations for our lives?