The difference between dreams & desire

Dr. Abdul Kalam said,“Dream is not that which you see while sleeping it is something that does not let you sleep.”We have also heard somewhere “In order to succeed, your desire for success should be greater than your fear of failure.”

Both these quotes have very succinctly touched on what happens in reality. The most common refrain from the adult world that all students have to encounter is that they must have a strong desire to succeed. And that everyone must have a dream. Students also continuously hear that life is about living ones desires and dreams.

I think that is where the problem lies. Most of the times we link desire with dreams and confuse the two. Parents want their children to be successful and then load their children with expectation that is laced with parental unfulfilled desires woven with what the children themselves want to do. They begin to dream for what they desire.

I am of the opinion that true education teaches the children to differentiate between desires and dreams. Good teachers and a good school opens the eyes of their students about the injustice they do to themselves and then society by thinking that desires is the same as dreams. Experienced and wise teachers show their children that desire is like a craving and dreams is like hunger, a fundamental necessity. Craving for food may vacillate and will never be satiated because a craving can often be replaced by another. But a dream is like hunger that can be sated with proper nutrition.

The difference between DREAM and DESIRE is that the dream is what we build for a group; for instance a class, a school, a family, an organization or even a country. Ironically desire is what we aspire to build only for ourselves.

Good teachers should think it is their responsibility to develop children that have big dreams about themselves and others, dreams that will spur them on to do well in life and give them a purpose. They should teach that desires can make a person selfish, just a consumer of the system whereas dreams will build ideas, processes and even institutions. In good schools and homes there should never be any confusion about the difference between desires and dreams.