Claim: Even though young people often receive the advice to “follow your dreams,” more emphasis should be placed on picking worthy goals. Reason: Many people’s dreams are inherently selfish.

Since our childhood, we have been encouraged to pursue our dreams. Even before that, our parents, teachers and all elderly people have been motivating us to dream big. The claim made here is that emphasis should be placed on picking worthy goals rather than following selfish dreams. But my question is aren't all dreams or goals selfish with respect to the person who is dreaming? Is it wrong to dream if someone wants to be a millionaire and is it wrong to spend all of the money on oneself rather than in charity? I think the opinions might very here. Its not a rule that one should help the needy, but yes if one does, it is definitely a good deed. Based on that, we cannot judge that a person's dream of being a millionaire is selfish.

Dreams usually are selfish, but it depends what path you choose to achieve that. The path that you choose to achieve your goal determines if you are being selfish in achieving your dreams. For instance, if your goal is achieve a certain position at a reputed firm, it is definitely not a selfish dream. But, if your goal is to push down your competitors so that you are the only eligible candidate for the position, that's a selfish goal.

All the examples stated above are at small scale. Even if we consider a bigger picture, the same thing applies. Let's take the example of a nation's government. The President, Prime Minister and all other senate members might have a goal of making their country the best at everything. This patriotic feeling is in every citizen. Can we call that dream selfish? How you achieve the status of being the most powerful country will define you if the goal was selfish or not.

The other question that comes to my mind, can dreams be controlled? And even if they can be, is it right to curtail them? Aren't we allowed to have that much freedom or free will that we can dream anything that we want and achieve everything that we desire? A dream will not be a person's own dream if we try to put any restrictions on it, it will be an altered dream that will be implanted by somebody else.

I am a strong believer in dreaming and even stronger believer in achieving those and would certainly not want anyone asking me to pick my own dreams.