Here's an article I'd like to share,

So whoever you are,

Take some time to read it.

Whose dream is it anyway?

There's nothing wrong in gunning for the 5Cs but try living our dream first

--- by Grace Chua (ST, Monday, April 26 2010)

FOR most young people, the Singapore Dream still means material comfort, according to a recent Straits Times article. Get married, own a car, buy a condominium and settle into a middle-class life of "happily ever after".

As young working adults, we worry that these dreams are beyond our reach.

But as I examine them more closely, the 5Cs - cash, credit card, car country club membership and condo - sound less like authentic aspirations, and more like wants, or expectations, a bar set by someone else.

At the dawn of this nation, material comforts might have made the real fabric of the Singapore Dream.

My great-grandparents came here from China for a better life. They built a thriving goods and sundries business, and even managed to own a car.

Yes, that sounds familiar. But at least, they charted their own course.

Three of four generations have passed, but we seem still to be hankering after the same things our grandparents and parents wanted.

Could it be that we have no dreams of our own? Or that we feel we need to seek permission to have new ones?

Could that be why Generation Y is feeling the state of restlessness our parents felt only as they approached their 40s?

What precipitates so many of our quarter-life crises is this: Young people are trying to figure out if we're doing what we really want, or what others think we should do.

A decade ago, film-makers and authors Colin Goh and Woo Yen Yen wrote about this same issue in their 2000 essay, Paved with Good Intentions. They described how the Singapore Dream had calcified into the Singapore Plan.

Ten years on, little has changed. What's wrong with us?

I can think of dozens of excuses - we're brought up to be hard-headed pragmatists, not dreamers; Singapore is too small to offer any real chance or success.

But these are cop-outs. Truth is, we buy into the dream of the 5Cs because it's easier to do what's normal and accepted, even though it leaves us beholden to anyone who offers us those things.

If we're not twitching at every house-supply tweak, then we're staying in well-paying jobs we don't like, or getting into astronomical debt to drive that all-impressive car.

On the other hand, without the need for permission, the definition of a dream is limitless: make a movie, be the first female Prime Minister or a stay-at-home dad, campaign for bicycle lanes, volunteer, run a business.

Our ancestors didn't need endorsements to shoot for the moon.

They just did it, and look where that's got Singapore today.

If the dreams you nurse are your legitimate passions, you'll find a way.

Of course, there are risks; and the bigger the dream, the greater the chance of failure. Even so, I dream about shaping a kinder society, and of writing poetry and science books.

Sure, wanted material things is perfectly all right. Living "the Plan" is, after all, a good backup when you can't get exactly what you want.

But maybe we should at least try living the dream - any dream as long as its yours - first.