Dream stealers

On entering the world, I knew almost immediately that I was not going to succeed in a worldly manner. Living in a capitalistic country, meant I was surrounded with ambitious, materialistic, and competitive people. My peers and I were all young, and it was hard not to keep the default narrative going, after all, by not doing so, was a general fail in the eyes of the majority. "Failure" required humility or humiliation, one or the other. I had never realised, due to taking things very much for granted, that school was much more to do with a programming than an acquisition of knowledge. Directly and indirectly, we had been encouraged to get the highest mark, but importantly, one higher than those of others; by jumping the highest high jump, sprinting the quickest hundred metres, maybe dating the prettiest girl or most handsome heartthrob, winning the most prizes, being offered a place in the best university, to study one of the most prestigious subjects. We may have even extended this mentality, towards comparing our dad's car with the cars of other dads. School uniforms helped level us on the surface, but nowadays, some children draw the cheapest Android phones from their blazer inside pockets, whilst for others it's the latest Apple pro. Apparently, trainers were an item of status also, at one point.

I started learning the piano from scratch almost straight after leaving university. The year was 1989. I was 21. It was a most gigantic undertaking, and I still play regularly. I instinctively knew I had found myself in a total power hierarchy, but I had naively not seen it coming. It was not my own fault. More than anything it was misfortune. Piano became my substitute career, but it was a skills hierarchy. No-one got in the way. Well, that's a partial truth. People tried to mock me for learning it. That's where the title of this blog comes from. There are "dream stealers" in this world, who are not only content to trample on you in your power hierarchy; but they want to put you off succeeding, in your own personal skills hierarchy, which has no bearing on anyone but yourself. Maybe at school, they didn't even do the high jump, and you didn't compete with them in the hundred metres sprint. I'm going to swear for the first time in one of my blogs, because despite the above, they still wanted you to knock the f***ing bar off when you jumped.

Watch out of for the dream stealers, that's their path. Good luck to them.