Dreams

I dream big, most of the time. I’m trapped in a bubble of dreaming. Those around me are always dreaming of greatness, pursuing dreams to be at the top. But when I ask my friends who are elsewhere, they say greatness for them isn’t necessarily about being at the top of anything. They don’t feel the need to be remembered. “Everyone will be forgotten eventually”, said one of my friends. And yet, I yearn to be great. Only if I’m great will people be proud of me, will people respect me. When people do well in their lives, those around them tell their kids “look up to this person”. “They are a great person”. And I’ve found that often, the opposite has been the case. The people touted as being great or amazing in my family have honestly been not as helpful or supportive to those asking for help as I would think they should be. When I look into the future, I want to be everything they are and everything they are not.

But you can’t have everything. Making those sacrifices is important. You have to focus on the things that really matter the most to you. So at the end of the day, maybe greatness isn’t everything. I don’t need to be remembered by the world. I just want to be remembered by the people whose lives I’ve made better, and I don’t need to be a colloquially “great” person to do that. Greatness should lie within, not without. Nobody needs to tell you that you are great. You have to be great for yourself, and not expect the stamp of approval from anyone else.

This whole time, I thought that attending a “great” university would be the thing that would make me “great”. Attending a “great” medical school. But there are so many people who continually say “All med schools are the same”. Why do I choose to turn a blind ear to those people? I look the other way, at the things I don’t even really want, dreaming of greatness that will never make me satisfied. The issue with the greats is that they are constantly pursuing greatness, and they never find peace.