I was born in the early 90’s. So, thanks to the Disney Channel and general culture of the time, I was raised to believe that it's important to have dreams and to follow them. Even now, when I’ve experienced nearly four years of college in a program that sometimes seems determined to turn my dreams into sharp, glittering dust, I still believe that it's important to hold on to your dreams and to follow them. Here are two important reasons why:

First, dreams are important to progress, both personal and societal.

Imagine if no woman had ever dreamed of being more than a subservient wife and mother. Imagine if no slave had ever dreamed of freedom. Imagine if no minority at all had ever dreamed of having the same rights and treatment as rich, straight, cisgender white men. Life would be even bleaker than it is right now (and that says something). There would be no legislative or societal progress. Hope itself would be dead, if it had ever been born at all.

Picture your own life. If you have nothing to strive for, no ultimate goal in mind, how do you find a path that ends in fulfillment? Can fulfillment even exist without its parent, the unfulfilled dream? When we no longer have dreams and no longer try to fulfill them, we become automatons. We fill spaces in society as needed. But it doesn't matter which spaces, because there's no thought to the future. There's only the present, and even that's empty.

Also, people wouldn't necessarily do their jobs to satisfaction. Not to say that they wouldn’t work hard, but the results are simply better when the person is excited to do the work. That excitement usually comes from basking in the glow of some kind of dream, even if that dream is far off.

Second, following your dreams can teach you a lot about yourself.

I will be the first to admit that not every person is right for exactly every dream they have. However, the journey to find the dream is often how you find yourself. Let’s say your dream is to be the CEO of a major corporation. Maybe you would be miserable as a CEO, but on the way, you discover that you have a great love of marketing. If you didn't follow your dream, you likely would have never found your ideal reality.

Your dreams also show what's important to you. For instance, if your dream is to travel the Amazon and catalog all of the different tree frogs you can find, but you also know that you'll never compromise on having kids one day, you know that, while knowledge is extremely important to you, so is building a family.

That seems simple, but many people have clouded self-perception. They have a false image of themselves that they cannot or will not see through. Looking at their deepest desires for the future is a good way to make the false image more transparent, so that they can see who they really are.

It's important to have dreams. Whether or not you ever manage to fulfill them, they give you something to strive for, something to hope for, and a journey on which you can find yourself and your ideal reality.

*Title (and frankly, the entire article) is a reference to “Dreams” by Langston Hughes.