Failure and risk are kissing cousins.

Some people are so afraid of failure that they won’t take any risk.  I knew of a lady who didn’t leave her home for 15 years because of paralyzing fear.  The thought of risk is terrifying.  “Not today satan. You can’t trick me into going to the store.”

Sounds like 2020.  And 2021.  And probably 2022.

Others are so afraid of failure that they’ve become pessimists. Maybe they once dared to dream and failed.

Nothing makes them happier than to watch the dying embers of the dreams of another, all going up in smoke. They perch like vultures on a wire, licking their razor lipped beaks, waiting to munch on the corpses of dreamers, drooling over the thought of their tears.

They love nothing better than to lurk at the busy intersection of hopes and dreams and sadistically relive and relieve the gut-wrenching pain of their own pitiful attempts to succeed.  It’s cathartic, really—punishing the dreamers for daring to dream creates the sacrifice the gods demand when their dreams die in secret, untested.  Someone must pay for their own sins of mediocrity!

Mediocrities everywhere, absolve yourselves at the altar of failed dreams (with only slight apologies to whoever wrote Amadeus).  Rejoice vicariously for the gods when failure rears its ugly head, for the gods are merely the products of your own self-loathing.

And then there are the dreamers.  They will risk everything for the dream.

They know they could fail.  They’ve calculated the risk. They pursue the reward with the heckling of the mediocre ringing in their ears.  They cannot live in a world where their dream does not become reality. They respond like Willy Wonka to Veruca Salt: “We are the music makers.  We are the dreamers of dreams.”  

The Veruca Salt’s? They are the beneficiaries of the work of the dreamers.

If you’re a dreamer of dreams, pull up a chair. Let’s talk. Content creators and investors are welcome.