Keeping Your Dream

Keeping Your Dream

Where there is no vision, the people perish.

Proverbs 29:18, KJV

Our friend John Maxwell once told us a story he read about a man who caught a vision for his life—in spite of what others said. His name was Monty Roberts.

Monty owns a ranch in San Ysidro, California, and is the son of an itinerant horse trainer who traveled to farms and ranches training horses. As a result, Monty’s high-school career was continually interrupted. When he was a senior, he was asked to write a paper about what he wanted to be and do when he graduated.

That night Monty wrote a seven-page paper describing his goal of someday owning a horse ranch. He even drew a diagram of a two-hundred-acre ranch, showing the location of all the buildings, the stables, and the track. Then he drew a detailed floor plan for a four-thousand-square-foot house that would sit on the two-hundred-acre dream ranch. The next day he handed it in to his teacher. Two days later he got it back and on the front page was a large red F with a note that read, “See me after class.”

When he went to see the teacher he asked, “Why did I receive an F?” The teacher said, “This is an unrealistic dream for a young boy like you! You have no money, you come from an itinerant family, you have no resources! Owning a horse ranch takes a lot of money! You have to buy land. You have to pay for the original breeding stock . . . and later you’ll have to pay large stud fees. There’s no way you could ever do it! So, if you will rewrite this paper with a more realistic goal, I’ll reconsider your grade.”

Monty went home and asked his father, “What should I do?” His father said, “Son, you have to make up your own mind on this. I think it is a very important decision for you.”

Finally, after sitting with it for a week, Monty turned in the same paper making no changes at all. Only across the top of the first page in large red letters he wrote, “You can keep the F, and I’ll keep my dream.”

Today, Monty lives in his four-thousand-square-foot house in the middle of his two-hundred-acre horse ranch where he often has children come to learn about horses. And he has that school paper framed over the fireplace! Some time ago, that same school teacher brought thirty kids to camp out on his ranch for a week. Upon leaving, he looked at Monty and said, “I stole a lot of kid’s dreams, they gave up too easily. Fortunately, your dream crystallized. You made it happen.”^a

When John finished telling us the story of Monty Roberts, he said, “When someone shares their dream with you, it is the center of their soul. Do everything in your power to come alongside them and help them reach their dream.”

If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.

—Henry David Thoreau

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