What If My Dreams Never Come True?

...I have wandered down countless paths, chasing different dreams, but every attempt has been in vain, each one ending in disappointment. I feel deeply unfortunate, steeped in bad luck. At times, I wonder whether I am bound by some unbreakable curse, the sort of explanation a traditional African might reach for in the face of relentless misfortune. Unlike fairy tale princesses whose curses are always lifted with a kiss or a touch of magic, mine appeared destined to remain world without end. Nevertheless, despite what feels like a Tutankhamun-esque curse, even after decades of fruitless pursuit, I am unable to let go of my dreams.

But my hope is fragile, if not completely lost. The courage to pursue my ambitions has abandoned me. Doubt courses through my veins, infused into my very being as if encoded into my DNA. My self-confidence falters; it feels incomplete, like a fractured foundation unable to support new hope, making it hard to believe in anything new.

I am worn out by the emotional toll that disappointment brings. The idea of success feels more like a myth than a possibility. Conversations about potential and the possibility of my own future accomplishments feel pointless to me. I have grown tired of motivational stories about people who struggled for years before finally making it, anecdotes meant to encourage me to persevere, like Thomas Edison and his alleged ten thousand failed attempts at inventing the lightbulb. Honestly, who was even counting? Did he keep a notebook, meticulously recording each failure?

I have heard them all, from those who never gave up to those who found success later in life: Colonel Sanders launching KFC in his sixties, Ray Kroc building McDonald’s past middle age, Vera Wang designing her first wedding dress at forty, Stan Lee creating Spider-Man in his midlife. All are told as if a story alone could magically change our lives, handed out like bandages for the bruised spirits of the not-yet-successful. To me they no longer carry hope. If anything, they feel like a cruel reminder that while others eventually make it, I remain trapped in a cycle of defeat. For every person who made it late, there are thousands more who never made it at all. And when you have been trying for years, pouring yourself into your work only to be met with silence or rejection, those stories do not feel like hope, but exceptions falsely held up as rules.

My dreams are fading away, and it feels as though I, too, am withering alongside them. Slowly unravelling just as they are. Broken, just like them. I no longer feel like the person I once was; I have been reduced to something far less. I no longer believe in my dreams, or perhaps it is not so much a lack of belief in my dreams as it is a lack of belief in myself. I know that without self-belief, achieving my dreams is impossible. This absence of self-belief has made me feel unworthy, and this sense of unworthiness makes me feel undeserving of success and afraid of it. Maybe it is time to face the harsh reality that my dream life may never come true. Accepting that possibility has been one of the hardest and most heartbreaking sources of my unhappiness.

I am afraid to dream again. I am trapped in a paradox: afraid to pursue my dreams but equally fearful of living without them. Is my life of any value if I fail to achieve anything significant? As it becomes increasingly clear that these dreams may never come to fruition, I find myself asking: How can I find happiness while living with unrealised dreams?

The reality is many talented people never get to fully realise their gifts as they envisioned.

Not everyone gets the stage they dream of. There are only so many professional athletes, celebrated singers, writers, actors, designers, lawyers, engineers, architects, scientists, professors, CEOs, investment bankers, entrepreneurs, pilots, presidents, and so forth that the world can accommodate. What do you say someone who has real talent but never gets their chance? How do they make peace with the reality that their lives might come to an end without ever getting to show the world what they are capable of? To possess a gift you are never able to fully express or share is a sorrow that cuts deeply, to the marrow. It is a difficult truth to accept. A painful reality, but it’s one that many must face.

Ben Okri said it best: “It may be what you could be that haunts you. It is real. It is a weight you have to carry around. Each failure to become is a weight. Each state you could inhabit is a burden as heavy as any physical weight, but more so, because it weighs on your soul. It is the ghost of your possibilities, hanging around your neck, an invisible albatross, potential unknowingly murdered.”

Maybe the only path to happiness now is learning to make peace with a life where my dreams never come true. Or maybe I am just telling myself that to shield myself from the pain of unmet dreams. I sometimes wonder if those without grand dreams are the lucky ones. They seem to move through life with ease, finding joy in what is rather than what could have been or might be. They simply live, and that seems like its own kind of freedom.

What is it, really, about the thought of not achieving my dreams that stirs such fear and melancholy in me? Could it be that my deepest fear is not just the fear of failure, but the fear of being forgotten? That when I die, I will gradually vanish into obscurity, my name forgotten, and my existence erased as if I had never lived at all. Never existed. The life I am living now feels unworthy of being remembered. Who will remember me? Who will speak of me when I am no longer here? And if no one does, does that mean my life mattered less if no one remembers me after I am gone? Most people are remembered, if they are lucky, by their children and grandchildren, but when they too are gone, so is any trace of the ones who came before. Within two generations, even family forgets. And that’s it. Forgotten forever...

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