Makes you driven, with untainted fuel

I have been working on a “pet project” for some time…to revive a small museum and library located in a nearby city. This isn’t a rant for why I feel it’s needed or what type of library it is; this is a rant about people that try to stop you from following your dreams.

I will never understand why people mocked the Wright brothers or told Martin Luther King equal rights were a pipe dream. Sometimes people have different ideas, but when those ideas are for the common good: why bring them down? I say let them dream big! Now, the work I have been doing isn’t anything spectacular like inventing an airplane or changing the way a nation looks at race; it’s just a dream.

Myself and a friend put around 400 hours of volunteer work into this project over a few months. Not a ton, but just enough personal time to make this project become a piece of me that is sensitive at times. Many people for whom I was doing the work would constantly complain that my efforts — while appreciated — would just end up back at square one. I always thanked them for thanking me, but assured them I was not yet deterred. Months past and I would get the same response from many different people, all of whom this project was for. It seems that after many years of being let down, there was an opinion formed and it was going to take a lot more then my effort to get people to turn around just long enough to hear let alone agree to what I was saying or doing. The time came when my friend and I had to stop talking to people about the work we were doing because it brought in negativity and it would put the brakes on our passion.

It’s been more then 7 months and neither I nor my friend have quit. We have actually brought in some of our other friends to help as well. Now people are turning their heads, they are listening and some are asking how they can help…some of the same people that told us to just walk away a few months back. They were now feeding our passion and making us more driven then ever.

Rather then just working to follow my dreams and using negative energy to fuel my work; I’ve now realized that I have a new motivation. To work just as hard as I have been, with the reward of seeing the look of pride on faces of those that tried to deter us when they realize we did it and we still want them to be a part of it.

“Keep away from small people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.”

– Mark Twain