Childhood Dreams

I’ve recently watched Randy Pauch’s last lecture (I know, I’m behind the times). It was amazingly inspirational, and couldn’t have been delivered better. It also got me thinking about my own childhood dreams and I realised that if I don’t pen them down somewhere, I’ll forget them or manipulate them. So here’s a list of my childhood dreams (as best as I remember them) in no particular order:

  1. Be an archaeologist and dig up some dinosaur bones (I was a huge dinosaur fan…).
  2. Get into MIT (this was a semi-promise I made to Mr. Derek Mosser, my 4th standard teacher, before I actually knew what that entailed).
  3. Compose and play live a blues piece similar to Stevie Ray Vaughn and Vinnie Moore.
  4. Do Jackie Chan-level stunts (if I recall correctly, this was back when I was horribly fat but not willing to acknowledge the fact).
  5. Be a Jedi Knight.
  6. Write a novel.

The list isn’t as long as I had thought, but good god, I have no idea how to achieve any of them. This is an extremely meme-able topic, so I’d love to see anyone else’s list. Finally, I’d request you all to please comment, my blog is getting lonely :-P .

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  • Hey!

    Nice post, nicer blog :)

    Have you read the book? If you haven't, I strongly urge you to do so. The book is even better than the video, because it can afford to be longer and more detailed. Must be there in Tata Book House..

    Also try his time management talk, if you haven't. That's BRILLIANT!!
  • My childhood dreams? LOL.

    1. I wanted to be one of those advertisement hoarding painters :P
    2. I've always wanted to own a shop and name it something interesting.
    3. Wanted to ever become a scientist (Yo man! On my way to it... hopefully)
    4. Wanted to write my own OS? (Linus pwn3d me :P)

    I'm sure I've dreamed of myself in successful states in many other contexts / dimensions, most of which I've given up on now - Music, for instance.
  • arunchaganty
    Wow! That's quite some feedback :-).

    @Rahman + Uttara: My childhood past is better left there ;-). I'd rather not stir those skeletons
    @Tanmai: Agreed, you'll never accomplish #6.
    @Kashyap/Captain Planet: Nice set :-).
    @Kirtika: Ambitious set, but totally accomplishable. I like the first one - though I rather go upto some house in the middle of a forest.
    @Yashwanth: :-). You should really watch the video - I think you can/will accomplish all of those

    Cheers,
  • Same pinch! I wanted to be an archaeologist too! You were horribly fat? When?
  • Yashwanth
    I am stirring my mind to recollect my childhood dreams.
    I hardly paid any attention to them till now. Lets see

    1. To own a remote controlled airplane....1st class....I used to really DREAM about this one
    2. Get Super Ted powers.....4th class
    3. To become the class monitor.....from 3rd class onwards...realised in my 9th standard
    4. Fly a plane more than that communicate like a pilot....I still feel it is very cool
    5. Be an Iceman and have Power star along with me...
    6. Yeah and finally in my 6th-8th classes I had this immense dream to be like James Bond like Pierce Brosnan was my idol. Use his cool tech and do "stuff" he does.
  • Good reminder for the times when one forgets being true to one's dreams.
    Here's my list - (following the trend here, I state them chronologically as well)

    * Be rich enough to buy out all the bookstores in the country and sail off with my books in a giant yacht to a nice calm isolated island with good intellectual company to spend a few years in books and discussions. (Class 1- till date)

    * Top the IAS Civil Services exam, be on the cover of Competition Success Review (CSR) for being the topper and do some revolutionary and benevolent work in my job after that. (Somewhere between Class 2 and Class 3, when I had the contents of all the latest CSR issues on the tip of my tongue and had almost finalised what subjects I would take for my prelims and mains and planned my GDs/PIs till about class 7/8 when I finally realized that I was so totally lacking in the diplomacy and tactfulness needed for a Public. Admin. job.)

    *Write a book. (Class 4- till date.)

    *Be an awesome dancer. (Class 5)

    *Be an awesome philatelist with the most enviable stamp collection ever. (Class 5-7)

    *Be the next Sudha Murthy i.e as close to her awesomeness as possible, including marrying a future Narayana Murthy (which I would probably never be deserving and/or lucky enough to.)
    (around Class 7. Still aspiring for the first part)

    *Be with Udayan Mukherjee on one of his CNBC-TV18 shows maybe as a co-host or as a guest CEO.
    (Class 8 till date)

    * Have mind-reading powers. (sometime in high school)
  • @Puranik: The first step towards dream 7 would be to throw the endangered species into the dustbin I guess :P (Couldn't resist the dig :-D )
  • Nice post.
    These are my dreams

    0.> Swing from building to building like spider-man. To teleport to places like night-crawler.
    1.> Write a soft-ware that thinks like a human and composes music.( Still dreaming )
    2.> Become a rockstar. ( dream is running away from me )
    3.> To become an inventor ( Given up )
    4.> To play Liu Kang in live mortal Kombat
    5.> To meet wild Chimpanzees / meerkats / Cheetahs / dolphins and interact with them.
    6.> To build my own roller-coaster amusement park
    7.> To kill global warming, to save all endangered species from extinction, to bring down pollution to the level it was 100 years ago, to get rid of the energy crisis ( current dream )
  • 0.> Swing from building to building like spider-man. To teleport to places like night-crawler.
    1.> Write a soft-ware that thinks like a human and composes music.( Still dreaming )
    2.> Become a rockstar. ( dream is running away from me )
    3.> To become an inventor ( Given up )
    4.> To play Liu Kang in live mortal Kombat
    5.> To meet wild Chimpanzees / meerkats / Cheetahs / dolphins and interact with them.
    6.> To build my own roller-coaster amusement park
    7.> To kill global warming, to save all endangered species from extinction, to bring down pollution to the level it was 100 years ago, to get rid of the energy crisis ( current dream )
  • Nice trip down the memory lane (or shall I say 'path'? ;-) ). Reminds me of my childhood dreams too:

    1. Learn the martial arts(I was extremely interested in Shaolin for some years but never got the opportunity to actually learn it :-( ) (~13 years)
    2. Become a pilot (~15 years)
    3. Become a mathematician(This 'wish' has been quite ancient but it started taking concrete shape when I was in my 10th class)
    4. Learn basketball (I tried my hand at it and became lousier at it than I was before :-P )

    Those were the ones I could remember. I had a lot of transient ones too, ranging from becoming a magician to being a sniper for the army(inspired by The Sniper in Commandos, one of the best computer games I've played) and a lot of other crazy stuff. :-)
  • Rahman
    Hey, such a pretty entry, seems i too need to put up mine , really awesome to remember those days
    why not accompany it with your childhood pics?
  • Amrut
    Sounds do-able I think
  • Hey, this reminds me of mine too, can recollect just one for now though :(
    I wanted to become an Astro'nut', create compact jetpacks and fly with them ;)
  • Sravan Babu
    Really a fabulous post
    It brought into mind all my child hood memories once again [:)]
  • Tanmai
    Right, thats a nice list. I think I could've guessed 1,3 and 6. (you've mentioned 1, and 3,6 are figure-out-able)


    Writing mine has made me realise that I was a born, a fart-castle architect. On the whole, however, it feels good to have the thing written down. :D.


    Here's to the future :

    (This is in (I hope) chronological order)
    <ol>
    <li>
    Become like the Swat Kats with my best friend, and go get the Kohinoor back from the brits. I had even started drawing schematics for my plane, with all the missiles. (~7 years old)
    </li>

    <li>
    Communicate with animals. (I was smart enough to realise that animals dont really talk, I remember that there was an offshoot of this dream, to something on the lines of, first making animals capable of talking, and then talking to them, so that there's perfect understanding)
    </li>

    <li>
    Become like Bruce Lee
    </li>

    <li>
    To have huge angel like wings that come out when I want them to, and fly.
    </li>

    <li>
    Become a scientist
    </li>

    <li>
    Have sex (Yup, I've hit puberty right about now)
    </li>

    <li>
    Become an inventor
    </li>

    <li>
    Own a company
    </li>

    <li>
    When I own the afore-mentioned company, and I'm too busy to commute by the increasingly congested roads, I skydive down to meeting venues, whence I close deals, and then get airlifted to the next place.
    </li>

    <li>
    Become a psychologist cum linguist. (~16 years old)
    </li>
    </ol>

    And like you said, I've not even the faintest idea how I'm going to achieve even a single point on my list - seriously, even #6 is proving to be mightily difficult ;) .
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