We live in a material world today. Each person’s status is measured by how much money he has, how many cars and homes he owns, etc. Every parent wants his or her child to excel in school and get a high paying job. It’s not that education isn’t important; it’s how we use this education that’s the problem today. Everyone always wants more and more money, therefore stuck in professions they don’t even enjoy just to make this money. This is not the definition of happiness. Dream Manifesto teaches us to go back to the only source that can make us truly happy – our inner self. We must focus on our own desires, not what society, family, or religion thinks our desires are.

Of course, money could be, and probably is, something we all want, simply because we all need money to survive. But that’s probably not the only thing we want. We also want loving relationships, healthy bodies, or perhaps we have a major problem in life that needs to be fixed before we even worry about the rest. Many things we want can’t be gained from education alone. We have to apply what we learn, or else that knowledge is wasted. In college, we usually pick majors that we are actually interested in, but not many people actually get a job related to their major. This is due to low job availability or maybe low pay associated with the chosen major. Thus, very few people end up doing in life what they truly love, and this leads to stagnation over time.

It all comes down to the pressure we face from society, parents, and peers to make more money. Magazines and television often over exaggerate the glamorous lifestyle of the rich and famous; so much so that we’ve practically been brainwashed. Just like young girls who watch thin models all the time think they’re fat, we watch rich people all the time and think we’re poor, even if neither case is true. It’s time to take a deep breath and prioritize what we really want out of life, not waste endless time thinking about things we don’t care for.