Between Dream And Reality

One skype session, my friend Mirza randomly (?) sent me a file. He said that this was just his another random writing about random things at random nights. oyeah if u ask me, Mirza is quite a random person :D But soon as i opened the file, i found out that this was no random writing. The topic is unique, about how to dream a realistic dream. I really like the way he writes down his ideas, and I thought it might be great for others to read. I already asked him to share the writing here, so enjoy :)

One of the things I learned quite a lot in the Netherlands was the difference between idealism and experience. I self-define idealism as the understanding on how reality should be while experience as the understanding on how reality is.

In the Netherlands, I acquainted with many people aged older than I am. This condition started shaping the difference. Whenever I had a conversation with people my age, I realized that we always talk about dreams, hopes, and current struggles. People at my age still have a long journey to go for their career and so-called hold their wish way beyond the limit. What they don’t know is that how tough the life would be if they continue doing it without any knowledge on how the world works.

What’s depressing is that I do that all my life. Once, I had a dream,though I still do, to be an astronaut. How foolish is that? Idealism started kicking in my mind when I was at tender age. What came across my mind was the imagination on how cool and respectable an astronaut is.

However, I believe then I started giving up hoping during my junior high school years. That time, I found out that Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon, had already earned his flight certificate when he was 15 years old.  15 years old! I was 14 back then and almost certainly wouldn’t have my training in the near future.

This idealism of mine was basically crunched and ripped into pieces when I looked through the experience of others who had already become astronauts. What could I do anyway?

However, as I’m growing older until I finally met a lot of friends in the Netherlands, I realize that experience is the stepping stone towards improvement, which many of my peers may not understand quite well.

For instance, during the issue of oil wells ownerships in Indonesia, most of the people may not agree the wells are run by foreigners. They possess this ideal world in their mind where everything must be self-owned, including oil wells in Indonesia. They still want government to control them all without any extra hand from abroad, such as ExxonMobil or Chevron.

However, I learned from my friend, who’s working in BPMigas and studying in the Netherlands, how difficult for government to bear the costs. He mentioned some huge numbers and described the complicated procedures behind the exploration and exploitation of oil wells, which I believe many don’t fathom. From that moment on, I did understand how risky for government who does seek stability in their budget to take part and play in this business.

Thus, with the help of this experience, if we want to insert our idealism to this issue, we should first learn these procedures and numbers from first-hand actors and then go from this. Without understanding, we will be just considered as people who shout things with no meaning and perhaps effect.

This is just one random example on how my older friend guided me to separate idealism and experience, the difference between “I will do” and “I have done”, between “I think” and “I know”.

Experience i believe is an important part to help people move forward. Thus, I really enjoyed talking with older people in those four months. In fact, only a few of my friends are of my age or younger. They help me shape what to be expected in real life, how to do this and that, and how to survive. Most importantly, they taught me how to integrate my so-called childish idealism with prior knowledge of reality.

Any thoughts? Want to discuss? Just add his skype: mirza.muhammad.hanif :)