Yes, as a 38-year-old, I will never be an Olympic gymnast. And as a Canadian, I will never be President of the United States. I can’t paint, so I’ll never be Grandma Moses. That doesn’t mean that I should stop dreaming and making goals.

I wanted to be an actor when I was 19. I went away to school for it. I spent money on it. I didn’t become an actor, but I still got involved in the world of theatre, made wonderful friends, and have practical skills I can use.

I spent 6 months in Afghanistan when I was 35, as a civilian on the military base. Originally I thought I was too old or too out of shape to go, but if I had believed all the negatives, I never would have applied myself and gotten a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

I think Trent’s post gives people slow-and-steady steps to take to help them start achieving their goals. Not everyone’s goal is to be world-famous and rich. And no, not everyone’s goal is reachable. But how dreary to behave as though if you had one dream and it didn’t work out, then there’s no point in dreaming and you might as well give up now.

Dreams make life liveable

Many people let disability rob them of their dreams, when they just have to look in a slightly different direction. A person who now limps can be a fine basketball coach at the local “Y” or for Special Olympics.

One man developed back problems. He could still putt, and really missed the companionship of his golf foursome. I suggested that they play with the other three doing the long shots and let him do all the putting. He thought that was absolutely out of the question without even bothering to ask his friends. Don’t close the door on yourself! Figure out what you CAN do and find a way to work with that. And don’t assume that others won’t go along with it. Ask! All they can say is “no.” Then you can find someone else to play with who will say “yes.”

There are some people who are completely incapable of reaching some of their goals. Some people really can’t write adequately and never will be able to. They will never make a living as a writer — unless they get some help, and join forces with someone who is a good writer and can help shape the ideas of the bad writer into something effective. A good mentor will help them be realistic and still find another way to reach either that goal or another one that is manageable.

And I’m not sure having smart people drop out of academia is a failure in the system. Academia requires different skills than just intelligence and it isn’t the best match for everybody. And that’s ok. Many of my colleagues would rather be making 250K/year (or more) than finishing a dissertation or dealing with a tenure clock. Some of them like short-term projects and are deadline driven so they’re doing non-profit consulting or government work. They probably could do academia, but they’ve discovered that academia is not a good fit for them. Their initial goal wasn’t the right one. But academia is a good fit for someone who likes more freedom or isn’t as driven by money.

And yes, professors are often terrible at predicting who is going to be a success and who isn’t. The skills necessary to do well in college and in classwork are not the same as as the skills needed for independent work.

His mom wanted to go back to college and she said “Mark- if I go back to college when I graduate in four years I will be fifty!” His response was “How old will you be in four years if you don’t go back to college?” She graduated with a 4.0.

I tend to view my life through this quote by Joss Whedon: “All I ask is this: Do something. Try something. Speaking out, showing up, writing a letter, a check, a strongly worded e-mail. Pick a cause – there are few unworthy ones. And nudge yourself past the brink of tacit support to action. Once a month, once a year, or just once…Even just learning enough about a subject so you can speak against an opponent eloquently makes you an unusual personage.”

Even if I’m just taking ten minutes on the internet to look up something I am curious about, I have propelled myself forward a bit. And if you are reading this blog and the comments, you probably have time to google something you have always wanted to know!

I also know that in five years, I’ll be five years older. If I don’t work towards my goals and dreams, then in five years, I will likely be in the exact same spot I am now (relationally, career-wise, education-wise, hobby-wise, etc.). If I do work towards my dreams, then I will at least be a little closer to accomplishing them. Either way, I will be five years older.

I wouldn’t want to crush the dreams of any student, but I have had to break it to a student before that no matter how many times they revised that paper in the foreseeable future, it was still going to be a “B” paper. This was hard to do, but in one case in particular the student clearly didn’t have the goods (at least at that point in their life) to write an A quality history paper.

Sarah, I’m sorry to be a Debbie Downer, but that’s a load of bull.

When I was a kid, I loved airplanes. I went to the air shows, I watched Top Gun, I wanted nothing more than to be a jet fighter pilot. I joined Air Cadets, studied hard, and excelled in all my flying courses. I got my glider license, and the very next year, my private pilot license. However, in the course of doing so, I learned I was red-green colour blind. No matter how hard I worked or wanted it, I would never be a jet fighter pilot.

Another quick story: In 2005, a 63-year-old university professor named Sean Egan attempted to climb Mount Everest, in an effort to prove you’re never too old to follow your dreams. Ironically, he died climbing the notorious mountain, proving exactly the opposite. True story, Google it.

I met two guys at a gym years ago who had been high school football stars. Both had scouts visiting and buzz of scholarship offers through high school. Both had serious knee injuries their senior year. All free opportunities for college evaporated based on their injuries. What stunned me was the difference in their attitudes.

One of them basically got a local warehouse job, and hung out with former teammates. He seemed like a decent guy, but only seemed to come to life if he talked about “the good ol’ days” when he played football. He acted like he had nothing left to look forward to, acting stuck in life, and he was only 21.

The other also got a local job, but was attending community college working towards a degree and working towards enough of a recovery that he was hopeful he would qualify for a partial scholarship playing football at a lower division school. He still loved football and sports and wanted to get into sports medicine. He was 20.

One guy’s dream was over and it was like watching a living version of the Springsteen song “glory days”. The other modified his dream to fit the reality and was looking forward, not back. You could even see the difference in their workouts, one guy going through the motions because that’s what he’d always done, the other focused on a specific regime to help him move forward.

So even if you can’t make the cut, if you really love what you wanted to do versus loving the idea of the praise and fame that would come with it, working in the area at some capacity, even if it isn’t your main job, may bring joy and a little extra income. Or you may find a way to turn where you have talents to allow you to still work with what you love. I have a friend who loved science and technology in high school, but he sucks at math and grasping abstract concepts. He flunked out his first year at college, crushing his dream of becoming a physicist. He shifted his focus to business, and he’s become very successful in dealing with the business end of cutting edge technologies, still working with the thing he loves.

But I hope that the students Jane mentions – the ones who get told by the professors that they’re not smart enough to succeed in grad school – keep in mind that what they’re hearing is just one person’s opinion. In the time I spent in academia, I saw a lot of professors who weren’t nearly as good at evaluating people as they thought they were. In the physical sciences especially, there’s a tendency to think that since the subject matter is objective and quantitative, there must also be some objective and quantitative measure of people’s abilities – and it doesn’t work like that at all.

And while some dreams, like being a concert pianist or a professional athlete, require an extraordinary level of ability (so if you don’t have that level of ability, you’re better off realizing that sooner rather than later), not all dreams are like that. Take Scott, for example, who wants to build his own house. That takes plenty of skill and knowledge, to be sure, but you don’t have to be one of the 100 best house builders in the world in order to build a house.

Like Trent, I always wanted to be a writer, and wasn’t initially very good at it. So I decided to practice — do a lot of little 5-minute writing assignments every day, whenever there was a gap in work and other responsibilities, followed by careful revision of what I’d written. It took years, but a quick glance at the publications section of my Web site shows how far I’ve come since that beginning.

Part of the trick is to make each of those baby steps sufficiently enjoyable that you look forward to a chance to do it again. (If not, possibly you need to reconsider whether your goal is what you really want to be doing in 5 years.)

I’m in academia, and I’ve seen a few professors who have told students that they just didn’t have the writing abilities and thinking skills to excel in graduate school. While this seemed cruel to me at the time, as I get older, I appreciate such hard doses of reality. I just hope I strike a healthy balance between letting my sons pursue their dreams and being honest with them.

It is hard to accomplish your dreams when you can’t even pay your bills every month.

After that, its just a matter of planning, will and determination

For some people, just getting their financial house in order could take all or most of the five years and take up a significant amount of their free time (for example, working a second job to pay down debt) thereby limiting the time you can devote to your dream along the way.

There are times when you have to decide whether you’ll wait those years and then go back to your dream or whether you’ll go for it and delay getting your finances truly in shape. Some dreams depend on a certain level of health or physical fitness and waiting too long might mean you’ve lost out on the chance to fulfill it.

For example, let’s say you want to enter (and complete) an Ironman Triathalon but you’ve got credit card debt, a car loan and a huge mortgage. You’ve got 1 or 2 kids who need braces or band instruments or whatever. How do you get what you want?

First, what do you need to do to accomplish your goal? You need to practice running, riding a bike and swimming. That means probably at least an hour a day at least 5 or 6 days per week. You need good shoes, swimsuits, appropriate clothes for biking and running, access to a pool and a good road bike. When you get to the point of entering events there are fees as well and you may have to travel to get to the events.

All of that costs money. Training takes time and energy and you may not be as able to devote time to making meals from scratch or to working a part time job.

Do you spend the next five years paying off the car, the credit cards and the dentist and hope you’ll still be in shape to start running etc. in five years time? But by then the kids may be going off to college or thinking about getting married and that’s a whole new set of expenses.

I think you have to take the first steps towards getting financially stable. Make sure your bills are getting paid on time. Make a budget and see if you can cut back in some areas. Maybe pay off one card completely. But then you also do something for you. You buy the runners and start running every evening after dinner. Or you get a membership at the Y or the community centre and start swimming at 6 every morning before work. Whatever it is, take a real step towards your dream even though it costs money.

Whenever I hear one of these discussions I always get the last song from Avenue Q stuck in my head. Some of us never do find our purpose in life, and hey, “don’t stress, relax, let life roll off your backs, except for death and paying taxes everything in life is only for now.”

I use my piano playing at church, I teach other people how to play the piano, I play for weddings and such, and I play when I sing with my children. None of these things are high-profile activities and none are earning me a huge income, but I think they’re still important and worthwhile, and I don’t at all look at my piano playing as a waste.

You may never be a concert pianist, but you don’t have to call less than that nothing.