Start with a Dream

What Makes Dreams Come True

“Hold fast to dreams

For if dreams die

Life is a broken-winged bird

That cannot fly.

Hold fast to dreams

For when dreams go

Life is a barren field

Frozen with snow.”

Langston Hughes

Everything in life starts out as a dream, a formless thought floating around in your head. 

A dream is a fleeting desire for something that evokes emotion for as long as you can hold it. A dream can be a doubled edge sword. It gives you euphoria when you have it, yet causes depression for every moment you are aware that it’s not a part of your reality.

A dream can be about someone with whom you want to be closer. It can be about achieving something big like a successful business, becoming an expert in something, even being famous for it.

A dream can be about a world the way you want it, being led by the leader you choose, or running according to the rules you want.  

Like everything in life, it is a building process. The point from dream, to thought, to plan, to action, to execution, setbacks, failure, learning, trying again, failing, retooling, improving, getting better, becoming wiser — this is the process of life!

A dream is the cycle towards materializing everything you want in this world – to extract a seed from our intellect, plant it and grow it into something real. Something you can see, and hold your gaze on. Something you can experience, and recall as many times as you want. Something you can be inspired by, if only from the satisfaction that you did it. You started with a fleeting thought, and transformed it into an everlasting reality.

This process is not man-made. It cannot be traversed solely by your limbs. No human can complete every stage in the process without getting tired, breaking down, or giving up. It is a process that you can only advance with the help of He Who created this path, and put you on it. Hashem gave you a never ending well of energy to hurdle every obstacle. 

It’s called faith (emuna).

Faith that Hashem creates the good and the bad. The bad to jolt you into action, and the good to serve as a constant beacon for where all of your actions should lead.

Faith that there no reason to despair in this world because it is all from Him, and He is pure good. That the toughest moments have a purpose and there is no such thing as pain that is pointless. Even if your dream has to be abandoned, or changed to the point that it looks nothing like how you first envisioned it, faith is what injects you with the courage and conviction that this, too, is the realization of something monumental.

Faith that a hardship is a greater gift than a victory. A dream, once actualized, is gone. A hardship brings you to try harder, improve yourself, and become better.

At every stage of our lives, and every stage in human history, every one of us has dreams. Personal dreams, dreams for our family, and dreams for the Jewish People and for mankind as a whole. 

Our dreams will become reality the same way all dreams do. By having the courage to act, a stubborn determination to keep going, and the never-ending faith that He is doing it all with you — giving you everything you need to make it happen.