Motivation and dreams
In every person's life, everyone has a dream of their own. Every dream, whether great or simple, is the motivation and the goal we strive for. And every dream also needs to be kept alight by the passion, the determination and the tireless effort of youth. Youth is a hidden treasure that not everyone recognises; it is the priceless gift nature has given us for the journey towards our dreams.
I was born and raised in a family of eight. Our livelihood depended entirely on farming, so we were not as comfortably off as other families. From an early age I witnessed, and came to understand at least in part, the hardship and toil of my parents and of farmers in general. I quietly told myself: when I grow up I must study hard and find a good job, earn enough money to support my parents and ease their burden. From then on I nurtured my dream of studying all the way to university, because I believed that only with education and ability would I find good work.
Yet my dream was set aside more than once because of the family's difficulties and hardships. When I was five my father died, and the whole weight of work and of raising the children fell on my mother's shoulders. Because they wanted me to keep studying, my older brothers and sisters had their own schooling interrupted; they left school to earn money to help our mother and to pay for my education. I was very young then, so I only knew how to receive and not yet how to give. Later, as I grew up and went through primary school and then lower secondary
school, I gradually came to understand, and grew all the more determined to study well so as not to fail my mother and my siblings. There were a great many difficulties, but with the help of many people, and especially the encouragement of the Brothers and of the older members of the Our Lady of La Vang Scholarship, I am now a final-year university student. Over four years of support from the Scholarship, over four years of so many turning points and so many trials, I have never stopped striving, and now my dream has begun to come true: I am about to put on the graduate's gown and leave university. That is my dream — not too lofty and not too ordinary, just within my reach so that I can achieve it. And you? What is your dream? I wish you too may achieve your dream.
It is true that no one taxes our dreams, and a dream can never come true if you do not nurture it every day and set about making it real. If you have a dream, you will necessarily make the effort and try hard to reach it, so set goals for yourself, mark out directions for your future, and above all dare to dream. For dreams are the foundation of success.
Maria Trần Thị Thắm Trại Lê Parish – Can Lộc Deanery Major: Vietnamese Studies Huế University of Foreign Languages
