“Is it very bad to not have dreams?” asks my friend. I was stumped ‘cos I had thought EVERYONE had dreams.
“I don’t have dreams of anything I want to achieve. At least you can say you want to be a travel writer. But I don’t know what I want,” says my friend.
This friend of mine is caught in a bigger quarter-life crisis than I am. She’s looking for a job after quitting teaching. The rowdy boys and bureaucracy got to her and she decided to up and go–her childhood dream of becoming a teacher shattered by the realities of the situation.
But while she knows what she does NOT want (e.g. sales jobs), she does not know what she wants. Hence her difficulty when answering questions like “Where do you see yourself in five years’ time?” “Why do you think you’d be good at this job?” “What do you want to do?”, at interviews she has gone to so far.
Nothing much I can do to help her really, except tell her to identify her strengths, weaknesses and interests.
But back to her first question. So is it really bad to not have dreams? I mean, at least a dream represents hope, right? And in many situations in life, isn’t hope the only thing that really keeps the human spirit alive?