English Version

Part 1: The Child

The stage of childhood was the stage of no worry, no gloom, and no concern. It’s a stage full of dreams, and unmatched ambitions, where there is no planning needed if you have sincere feelings. In that stage, we were always taught the importance of finding a meaning to life. Dream, because your dreams are your identity and achieving your dreams is your life’s meaning.

A cheerful belief that was easy to install in a child’s mind no older than 8 years old. So he starts to write the first sentences of his own story – with an ink that can never be erased – with hope.

In the first chapters of his story, our little friend was more special than the rest of his generation. He realised that an educated person has no chance to ask or to criticize. Although he wondered and had some doubts: “What if it is the wrong ambition? What if it is not the perfect ambition? How can a dreamer be sure that his dreams will actually come true? Aren’t there any barriers? No obstacles between him and his dreams?”

It didn’t take long until his teachers answered him with some sentences that kept ringing in his head: “Dream and believe in your dream! Achieving your dreams is your life’s meaning!” “fight for your dreams!” “A warrior’s effort will never be wasted!” “Prove yourself to the world!”, with other fake and made-up sentences. Our little friend didn’t realise the background of these phrases.

And how not? No teacher ever told him the complete truth; they only told a few parts of it. No one ever taught him the courage of giving up on his dreams just like the courage of hanging on to them. His teachers’ speeches were full of successful people and fighters’ stories. No one ever taught him how to accept defeat or when to give up.

Part 2: The Young Man

Little by little, our little friend begins to see a part of this world’s truth. The world is not happy or cute anymore, childhood pages are turned over and now, the chapters of youth and strength are starting. Soon, he found himself in a race without knowing when it would end. Unfortunately, he knew that he was in the late positions among his peers. 

Our young man believed that the intelligent person learns from his mistakes but who is even more intelligent learns from other’s mistakes. So he decides to consult his father.

And here was our friend’s first shock! He was surprised to know that what he had learned for years since his childhood, was only a droplet in the wide sea with rocks on its beach; where lots of his dreams were smashed into pieces.

He found out that his father was only just one of those who got their dreams lost deep down in the sea. His father is one of those who will always stay stuck in the question: “What happens after the death of a dream? People whose dreams let them down, where do they go?”

Our friend’s shocks multiplied until his inside became full of scars and his outside was not the best either. He became torn between what he learned in his childhood and what he saw with his own eyes and refused to believe. How can he yield to the truth when he still has his childish version saying the same phrases? He thinks that maybe his story will be told just like other successful people’s stories.

Part 3: The race

Our friend continues the race, he sees – on his left and on his right – his generation falling one after another hopeless, and desperate; seeing in their eyes what he refuses to see in his own eyes. He sees a tear, a tear of heartbreak, a tear falling from the heart not from the eye, a tear of a dreamer who once owned the whole earth; but now, all what he got from this earth are scars that can never heal.

Despite his exhaustion, fatigue, and weariness, despite troubles and distress, something inside him is still insisting to continue the race. That dreamy child is still there preventing him from stopping. The child and the young man are in the same body, the child full of energy and the young man barely moving. The child is refusing to let go of his dreams and the young man is thinking what if dreams don’t want their owners, and realising the ugliness of what is going to happen to that little child, but should he stop? Should he turn back? What if he is one of the survivors? A question that both the child and the young man attach to one of his answers but not the other. Maybe we are one of the survivors, maybe we will be the owners of the next story that will be told for the coming generations.

In their march towards the mysterious end, the more encouragement he gets from the child, the more doubts he gets from the young man. 

“Don’t give up on your dreams, hold onto them, strive to succeed, do whatever it takes, because whoever fights for his dreams reaches the end.” The child said. Until the young man asks himself: “is it really true? Do all of them reach the expected end? Then whose dreams are those scattered on a beach seeing no end? Did no one abandon their dreams? Why would even anyone give up on his dreams from the beginning? His father was one of those abandoners! Why? How and when did he stop in such a race? Or even worse, what if he actually reached the end? but then what did he find?” We sure will find the answer on arrival.

Finale: Reaching the final line

After a long journey, our friend finally reaches the endline. Finally, everything ended, here is the dream land, here is the stronghold of the successful and the fighter, here is where heroes’ stories are born, here is where everyone pointed at and said you will never reach, here is where we taste the fruit of our effort, here is where we find questions and their answers, Here is where the curtains are lifted to show the last scene of our friend’s story. “Are we actually one of the survivors?” Our friend asked while becoming shocked for the last time on a road full of traumas like this one. How can he ever heal from it?

It is a barren land with nothing, nothing, absolutely nothing. Our friend was following a mirage, a mirage began to appear in his head since the age of eight but… nothing!

“Your dreams are who you are, your life’s meaning is to achieve your dreams.” 

This is a part of the truth, not all of it. A person needs to have enough courage and maturity to give up on his dream at any moment. A dream can be a person, a place, a job, a car, an infinity of dreams will whisper in your ears with all that you want and desire. However, not all who wish a dream, their dreams wish them back. Sometimes, dreams do not reciprocate that sense of dedication. You need to be prepared for this moment, be prepared to go back to the start line, be prepared to start all over again. Fight, strive, and do your best as you learned yet be prepared for the moment of rejection.

In a world that always encourages you to hang on to your dreams, in a world where your first memory is your presence in a race that you don’t know when or how it started, in a world full of the obsession of achieving, I tell you: “Accept the defeat.” Lose your dream, move on and replace it with another, but never lose yourself.