How far can we dream?
I often ask myself this question—it feels key to understanding how real change happens.
Change starts with imagination. We can’t move forward or change our current reality if we can’t imagine a different one. Some researchers call this "agency": we don't just choose, we need to know that we have a choice.
In his book Invention and Innovation, Vaclav Smil talks about factors influencing invention:
technical know-how, aka. "study tons",
perseverance, "work hard", and
creativity, "dream big".
This last has been catching my attention. Our ability to dream depends, among others, on our culture - at home, at school, at the workplace, in 'society'. Some cultures see limits everywhere. Others believe much more is possible. Our view of what’s possible is shaped by things like opportunity, support from others, and whether we are encouraged to take risks.
We all fall somewhere on a scale, as Jim Tamm explains in Radical Collaboration. If on a continuum, on one end, people believe they can change anything in their lives. On the other, people believe everything is already decided, and nothing they do will make a difference (aka. fate?).
Seeing what is possible is only the first step, though. The next is having the courage to go beyond that (the "choosing" part of agency). Entrepreneurs, for example, don’t just find good ideas—they take action and try to build something new, even when everything seems to be going against them. That takes courage. And energy - what Smil's calls "perseverance". Because it can be easier (and sometimes necessary) to stand back and watch than to take risks and be part of the change.
So what does activism mean in this context? How do we build a culture where people are encouraged to dream, to question, to hope for more or different? To go beyond what other people - be it the 'society' or specific individuals in power - say is true or right? And what happens when we grow up in places where we’re told to stay quiet and accept the world as it is? There is a fine line between acceptance and silence—the kind that keeps us from speaking up, not because we agree, but because we’ve learned it’s safer not to challenge existing norms. Dangerous things have happened to humanity because of this.
This way of thinking needs to start early. At home. At school. In the media. In the stories we hear about what reality looks like. It becomes so normal that we don’t even notice it (like the fish that doesn't know what water is). It shows up in small moments—like when a child asks, “Can cows fly?” and we say, “Of course not!” instead of saying, “Maybe, if they took a plane or had wings.”. We need to stop, as Sabine Hoffman says, "sabotaging our children's dreams”.
I remember attending a school program that struck me. We met alumni or pupils' parents who had done studies in our field of interest, to understand what a career in that field could look like. In my teenage eyes, it opened up the possibility that studying political science didn't necessarily mean "becoming the president", as many people joked when I told them what I wanted to study. They made me understand that there's a need for that skillset in many different places, beyond those that I could know.
That small moment helped me dream bigger. My parents telling me "Why not?" when I said I couldn't do something also made a difference. And maybe that’s how change begins—with little sparks that help us imagine more than we thought we could.
So, who has made you dream bigger? Who has opened gates to realities that you hadn't imagined before?
How far can you dream?