王萌 解放军外国语学院

                              Small Steps towards Big Dreams

On my way to the hotel this morning, I stopped by a fruit stall for a pineapple. Out of habit, I tried to bargain with the Vender, who looked young and green. He refused and said, “Little brother, I need every penny for my job interview.” His answer confused me, but later everything began to make sense when I learned that the pineapple boy came to this city after graduation with determination to be an IT engineer.

It had never occurred to me that a small pineapple could mean so much, and touch me so deeply. Yes, the realization of a dream lies in the accumulation of the smallest steps, dream lives in every thorn and sting we received from the journey. By selling fruit, the young man is not just eking out a living, but making the first step towards his dream.

He is not the only case. When a young taxi driver saves every dime and nickel for a flat in Beijing, he is steering towards his dream; when a nanny, grey with age, tries to make do with her meager pension against the soaring CPI, she is hanging on to her dream; when a middle-aged couple toil each day for over 8 hours to support their aging parents and to pay tuitions for their kid, they are fighting for their dream; when we college graduates strive to get a job in this world of competition, we are inching close to our dreams.

Those dreams might seem too petty to be mentioned in this national arena, but for the individuals their dreams mean everything. Just as Henry Thoreau once pointed out, “if on advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavours to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.”

This is an age of prosperity in which great dreams are realized, such as the Beijing Olympics and the Shanghai Expo; this is an age in which epic disasters such as earthquakes, droughts and tsunamis are no longer rare; but more importantly, this is an age of strive and struggle of each and every man and woman who shall be remembered for their painful but firm steps towards dreams.

In a nutshell, it is no exaggeration that dreams, no matter how big they are, build on small steps made by common people. The dream can be an affordable flat for the young driver. The dream can be a little-bit larger pension for the nanny. The dream can be a healthy happy family for the middle-aged couple. The dream can be a job for all would-be college graduates like us. It can also be a sold pineapple for the young vender and future IT engineer.

When this competition is over, surely I will stop by his stall again, and buy a pineapple, because it means a lot to him, and to me as well.