The Canned Dream

People care about the fruits, not about how a tree is nurtured and taken care of (I wrote a similar topic in this blog called "The Roots of a Seed").

We admire the harvest but forget the soil, the water, the sunlight, and the countless hours of care that went into growing the tree. This is human nature: we celebrate results while ignoring the process. But what happens when the fruit we so eagerly awaited turns out to be a disaster? Or worse, when the entire tree is axed or uprooted from the soil? What then?

The hope of life is the root. If the root is uprooted, there is no hope more hopeless than that. When a person pours their heart, sweat, and years into something—only to see it crumble—the despair is immeasurable. For some, the most desirable thing in life arrives not as a reward but as a tragedy. Many friends have described such moments as "killing the life," "demoting the life," or simply, "what is this?" Then come the blames—blame on your life, blame on the people around you, and finally, blame on God.

A few of my friends repeatedly blurt out, "I know everything, but what's wrong with this result?" It is like saying, "Life is empty, but why this suffering?" The contradiction haunts them. They believed that knowledge and effort alone would guarantee success. Yet here they stand, empty-handed.

It is almost time to complete our courses, and for many dreamers, the end of the course will feel like the end of their lofty dreams. But that is not so. It never ends. I tell myself that always. Endings are merely new beginnings disguised as closures.

My house owner was once a rickshaw puller. He told me his story. Now he owns twenty-seven buildings. He eats gold, I think. No one can predict life. One day you are pulling a rickshaw; the next, you own a city block. So I say: just dream and relax, but be ready to jump and hold tight when that dream knocks at your door. My door always remains open to welcome dreams. I hope I have not missed mine. Sometimes, the future—which seems illusory and out of reach—does not concern me at all. What concerns me is whether I am ready when opportunity arrives.

Anyway, I mock those "canned dreamers"—people who speak of dreams but take no action, who wait for success to fall into their laps. I think to myself, "Nobody knows everything; only God knows." But deep in my heart, I ask many times: how unequal it is that God seems not to know some people—those who truly deserve recognition and reward. Yet there is always a "but" in life. Why so much contrast and comparison? Why do the undeserving often prosper while the deserving struggle?

"God is the one," say politicians, as if they have a direct line to the divine. But ask any ordinary person, and they will tell you that their god is the best—implying that all others are false. That is a huge debate. When it comes to answering for an unseen thing like God, I give up. I cannot prove or disprove. I can only observe the world as it is: unequal, unpredictable, and often unfair.

And that brings me to George Orwell's Animal Farm. Let me leave you with this famous line: "All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others."

Perhaps that is the only truth we need to remember.