Follow your life, not your dreams

Last week, I heard Albie Sachs interviewed. He’s a South African activist who was arrested and jailed during the Apartheid years, and had to flee the country. After Apartheid, he became a member of the Supreme Court of South Africa. In the interview, at one point, he said Follow your life, not your dreams … your dreams will follow.

What a lovely idea… that we live the best life we can, one that fills us with a sense of purpose, and our dreams will begin to manifest. Not, perhaps, in the way we’d planned, but in a way that means something good to us.

What his words said to me was that we don’t need to be strict idealists in how we live, that it’s more about how we live than what we end up doing.  That makes sense to me: without the how, then even if I fulfill my dream goals, they may not mean much. What if I had to betray someone to get what I wanted? What if I had to betray myself? And in not betraying myself or someone else, it may mean I don’t achieve exactly what I’d aimed for, but something else just as worthwhile.

Thank you, Albie Sachs, for your words of wisdom.

Quote of the Week

“Maybe it’s not the destination that matters. Maybe it’s the journey.”
―

 

Life: the process is the product