My Dreams In My Life

Charles Dickens and John Steinbeck in their respective novels Great Expectations and Of Mice and Men, suggest that uncontrolled aspirations are inherently negative and do not lead to success in life. Modern society encourages individuals to aspire to greatness, however we must remember not lose focus on the tasks of the present if we want to achieve meaningful

Thousands of people move in order to pursue their interests and desires or even have a better life, however, I got bombarded with this experience when I was only 7 years old. I was an inexperienced adolescent who valued nothing but life’s necessities. My youthful self had no ambitions, no dreams, and no aspirations, I was simply happy with the little life has to offer. I was too young to comprehend but now as I’m looking back, I now realize my life changed the instance my parents informed my siblings and I that “we are going to America.”

Everyone in their childhood dreams of things that they will accomplish in the future. We have the inexhaustible enthusiasm that comes from our heart. The pursuit of that dream is the hope that makes us live. We are happy about what we can become, so how to become worthy of our parents and our family, we will be proud of all of them when we realize our dreams. But we do not know the risk and obstacles that we will face along the way to that dream, or how good or bad it will be to following our personal legend.

“Yara, breathe”, my father says in his soft and understanding voice. My nerves get the best of me as the plane shudders. I vomit into one of the bags given to my family and I, which was much needed considering only my father has ever been on an airplane. He would take trips almost yearly to visit his brother in Jordan. That was before the war made it almost impossible to leave our home. Before father lost his job. Before the Syrian war took everything from us.

I knew I was missing something in my life, but I was never able to pinpoint what. Ever since my parents divorced when I was twelve, I was forced to live with my father in Texas where he worked in an oil drilling company. For thirteen years I had to withstand this longing hunger, but I have decided to travel to my old hometown to figure it out. I glanced over to my diary nearby and opened it up to look at my old family picture, or at least what’s salvaged of it. Father ripped it up in half because he wanted me to forget about mother, and he wanted me to forget about it all. Continuing on, I started flipping through a few pages of my diary until I found my old address: 187 Mapleberry Oak in Toronto, Ontario.

Being the first-born son of immigrant parents, I learned that nothing is impossible. All of my life, my parents would tell me that I could do anything I set my mind to. As a child, I did not put a lot of thought into this. I would occasionally roll my eyes each time they recited the same cheesy line. Having heard this countless times beforehand, I did not see the significance in my parents repeating it. Not until I was much older did I finally recognize the weight behind this statement. My parents were only in their early twenties when they left Mexico for the United States. They had lived their whole lives in Mexico and were even enrolled at a university. Despite attending a great college, in Mexico, there are not a lot of opportunities to flourish in life. It was only until my mother became pregnant where she and my father seriously considered moving to the United States. They wanted what was best for the future, even if it meant leaving their friends, their family, and their lives behind. Taking their chances, they bravely and boldly ignored every reason against coming. My parents sacrificed everything and overcame the challenge of moving thousands of miles away from home into a completely different world.

Santiago, my boyfriend, passed away during my first semester at college. I was away at school and couldn’t make it on time to see him in the hospital one last time. My plane landed probably just as he was taking his last breath on the operating table. At that moment, I had felt as if half of me had died along with him. Life very quickly forced me to encounter difficult tasks in my life; a death of a loved one is one that not many learn to overcome. It is a reality not many truly know how to manage or if it is even manageable. Four years ago, at that very moment, I had lost hope on dreaming. I didn’t want to dream anymore because I felt like it had led to nothing the first time. I had dreamt of one day spending the rest of my life with Santi, but that dream had died along with him. At that moment I couldn’t see any dream ever coming true anymore. But just as life can throw us some curveballs, it can also teach us how to aim for them and send them flying away very high.

While I sit here, looking down at this shiny black keyboard full of letters, numbers, and punctuations, I can’t help but think how can I possibly fit my aspirations, my life on this Microsoft Word document. I guess I’ll start out by saying that I’m a dreamer. All of my life has been a crumpled up mess of obstacles, but I have always been able to overcome them and depend on how I control my future. That’s what keeps me going without being a dreamer I have no idea who or where I could be.

You have dreams. I have dreams. That person who lives next to you has dreams. That 's a common thing that humans do, you know, vividly hallucinate while paralyzed under our covers. Jonathon dreams too, but not like how I dream.

If you look up the word dream in a dictionary, the definition will be something along the lines of “a succession of images, thoughts or emotions passing through the mind during sleep”, yet if you ask Disney, “a dream is a wish your heart makes”. Ta-Nehisi Coates, author of “Between the World and Me”, writes about the world and all the ugly truths it holds in hopes of preparing his son for the life ahead of him. Coates wants his son to grow up and live a safe life following The Dream, similar to how Martin Luther King Jr talked of a world he dreamt where his children would have social and economic equality. Whether it’d be a prisoner dreaming of the day he is released and reunited with his family again, the American dream, or a single

How many times have you heard that we should dream big, aim high, and reach for the stars. These people who said so were right to advise us on such. Wouldn 't you agree with me, however, that most of your greatest disappointments stem from your own dreams, ambitions, and expectations?

A Thesis ANALYSIS ON TRAGIC CHARACTER IN THE MAYOR OF CASTERBRIDGE By ANDRI HERMANSYAH 102026024515 ENGLISH LETTERS DEPARTMENT FACULTY OF ADAB AND HUMANITIES SYARIF HIDAYATULLAH STATE ISLAMIC UNIVERSITY JAKARTA 2009 APPROVEMENT ANALYSIS ON TRAGIC CHARACTER IN THE MAYOR OF CASTERBRIDGE A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of Adab and Humanities In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of Strata (S 1) By ANDRI HERMANSYAH 102026024515 Advisory: INAYATUL CHUSNA, M.Hum. 150331233

I vividly recall being asked what my dream job was on a sunny day during our physical education class in third grade. The first thing that flashed through my mind was architecture as I observed my surroundings, feeling a sense of belonging and deficiency. I’ve always been keen towards drawing and painting. I have an incline to attribute my surroundings, the world, through a tale; a tale behind every landscape, edifice, and object. I don’t perceive a building as a background for a setting made of cold concrete and steel, instead, I see the marvelous architecture as a living character that provides the base of a story. A base that influenced my upbringing when I lived in my hometown Honduras and later the United States. Up to the present time when I lived in Honduras, the structure of our home was surrounded by nature; the everlasting scent of the flowers in the garden as birds flew by became habitual. Seating on the porch, I would draw on the white surface as my hands would rhythmically move to the symphonies my mom would play on the radio like Love’s Joy by Fritz Kreisler. In due time, it was time for us to leave everything behind in search of a new beginning. Our first residence in the United States drastically changed from what my child self was used to. We lived in a small apartment in Collins Ave where the structural space of the buildings seemed crowded. I felt foreign, missing the scent of home and natures’ labyrinth. Fritz Kreisler’s Love Joy soon became Love’s Sorrow as I took small steps to accommodate myself to our new surroundings, our new architectural landscape. Whenever I felt alone or defeated I would sit by our apartment’s window and listen to symphonies by Chopin, Vivaldi, and Paganini among others; they became a coping mechanism and inspiration to draw my surroundings inform of a lighthearted fantasy that made our new residence and neighborhood feel like home.

It was a pretty typical day today; all was ok. Being the person I was, I would always check my watch every second to make sure I will be on time. Slowly crunching on my Rice Krispie cereal, I stared at the wall, hoping to make time go slower. It was only 7:00 a.m, and I had another hour until I had to go to school. Time is money, you better hurry and eat. I thought. Hearing every crunch and pop of the cereal, I doze off, forgetting about being on time to school, daydreaming about what my dream life would be. I would be the most popular girl in school, and my crush Troy would ask me out to the Homecoming dance. I would be the prettiest girl in the grade and have the most friends. I would have breathtaking brown hair, the color of Nutella. My phone would ring simultaneously with text messages, showing my popularity.

I knew for a fact, that my life would be different from the rest of the kids my age, since I was born in a border city being El Paso, Tx and at the early age of four, I witnessed the divorce of my parents. I had to say goodbye to the perfect family that I’ve always dreamed of as well as to the life I’ve always wanted to experience. After the divorce I stayed with my mom since she had my custody, and that’s where the hardest part of my life began. My mom had of course the huge responsibility of taking care of me while she was attending college at the age of 26. It was hard for her being a single mother trying to get through college in order to improve our lives but it was also hard for me since, I would have spend the majority of my