Honorable Mentions: Dear Professor,
You Broke My Heart (dedicated to the ones who will try to do the same)
June, 2014.
“You should stay grounded. Don’t fly too much. Reality is different. Watch out with your dreams.”
My professor yelled at me.
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My final bachelor “dissertation” on her iPad screen.
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Words that still ring in my fucking ears to this day.
No.
I could never forget it.
Nothing was the same.
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My Professor and I had an insane argument.
Indeed, I usually hate being told I shouldn’t dream.
Or even worse: being judged in a negative way. It easily pisses me off. A lot. That is, when someone want ME to NOT be the good part of ME, you know what I mean? Nothing more frustrating.
You can tell me how I can do it. I’m willing to learn as much as I can. But, please, pleaseee…don’t stop my enthusiasm. What the hell. Why do you wanna transform my genuine dreaming process into something “harmful”?
I’m not ashamed to say this but, actually, I cried. I’m a sensitive guy.
“Damn, this shit hurts”. It’s not what you say but how you say it, you know.
Well, maybe I was acting like a douchbag too. After all, my pride had been hurt to the core.
Anyway.
Moral of my “thesis — story”: I got 1 point out of 4. And, believe it or not, the thesis was about my start-up: FashTime.
I quickly entered a spiral of thoughts.
“Is it my fault? Is my idea so bad? Did I behave like an asshole? What did I do wrong? And what if I can’t, what if I’m just an ordinary man?”
And you know, it’ really really sad.
It’s really really sad when we start stressing our heart with these kind of questions.
Trust me.
Why? Two simple “emotional” reasons:
- We start hating our dreams, our vision, our ideas etc.
- We start doubting ourselves: we lose our confidence and forget our enthusiasm.
Well,
“Dear professor,
My parents wrote me a quote by E. Roosevelt, couple of birthdays ago:
The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams”. (Thanks Mami and Daddy).
Hello, Hello, Hello, it’s me, dear professor.
If you are reading this, it might be too late. I’m pretty positive. But let me say something anyway, for god sake:
Reality.
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Reality ain’t different lol.
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Reality is just tough.
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“You shouldn’t dream!”.
You may’ve heard this pathetic shit many times in your life. But don’t trust this shit anymore.
We believe “truly dreaming” and “being ambitious” to be the same fucking thing. And you know, as soon as we realized we are stuck in our fucked — up life, well…
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we start losing faith in the power of “owning a true dream”.
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Even.
If.
We’ve.
Never.
Own.
A damn.
Nothing.
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Reality looks awkward whenever we are merely ambitious.
Machines.
We don’t succeed in something we’ve been working for for many years and yes…at that point our mind is gonna tell us “Ok, Life sucks, it’s not how I pictured it”.
Even worse. Our ego is gonna make us share our unbeatable cynicism and coldness with whoever sees (and want us to see) Life from uncommon prospectives.
Dear future professor,
Reality is a transposition of our authentic dreams.
Our feelings, Our ideas, Our dreams are physical in the universe.
That’s it.
Dear future professor,
Owning a true dream is totally a different deal.
That’s it.”
This story was published in Startime, the new way of perceiving startups and startuppers. Follow us 😎
About what you’ve just read: Notes from the Author — Marco Borgato:
This piece deals with the fact that people sometimes choose to push you down instead of lifting you up. The perfect example is what I experienced with a university professor few years ago, some time after my exchange program:
During that period, I was certainly naive, still not well trained for entrepreneurship. I didn’t have a perfectly clear and structured life purpose, vision statement, mission statement and idea yet. What I owned though, was the romantic dream of making an impact on this world and I was willing to share my great enthusiasm with people to change the world for the better, together.
That professor stepped on my dream and enthusiasm. I was hurt and broken inside. Personally though, I chose to not give up on me and my dreams. I rolled up my sleeves and kept working harder. However, how many people might not be able to transform negativity into positivity?
The first purpose of this piece is to say “hey professor, you are wrong and everyone who thinks and act like you is wrong too.”
The second purpose of this piece is to say “hey everyone, believe in the beauty of you dreams and don’t let people bring negativity into your enthusiasm. Life is all about positivity.”
