The power of a dream
by Herman Labuschagne

Eden Express article

When my father was 6 his father took him on a hunting trip. There he saw what was to him the most beautiful place in the world. Enthralled with this untamed world full of wild animals he firmly announced to his parents that his ambition was to become a "great white hunter" and to own a farm there when he grew up. 

His family just laughed at him. His father told him said that that was an unlikely dream because he was a sheep farmer's son, and a sheep farmer is what he will probably be instead.

My father was of a different mind, however. With his little Box Brownie camera he took this picture of the mountains near Mariepskop. And he never forgot his ambition. Meanwhile the years went by. My father did become a sheep farmer like his dad. But he didn't like sheep and he didn't stay with a dream that was not his own. He chose to follow his destiny in stead.  

When he was fifty years old, he retired. He returned to the Elephants Valley where he had taken that picture - and bought the land he had wanted for 44 years. It had been expensive back then. And it was expensive when he bought it. It was a big dream from the start, but he managed it despite all the odds. 

I have known many remarkable men in my life. Some made great fortunes. Some became famous. Others had remarkable achievements. Yet not many of them were able to realize their dreams like my father did. He was just an ordinary man with an extraordinary heart. 

At the age of fifty, he had quietly achieved every one of his dreams that I know of and some were big dreams. He never read motivational books, or wrote down goals and mapped out strategies like we are taught in books and seminars. What he did in stead was to never lose sight of is dreams. He just kept moving persistently towards it, one small step at a time - no matter how long it took. 

In just more than 10 years I'll be fifty too. The closer I get to it, the more I realize that half a century is a very short time. It is amazing how much can be accomplished in so short a period if one never loses sight of one's dream. I too have dreams. And I know I can reach them if I can walk in my father's footsteps.

The picture that my father took of his dream when he was 6 years old.