Part 6 — Managing Dreams — Soul Stone

Shubham Garg
3 min readSep 22, 2021

Dreams are whispers from your soul.

I’ve always been fascinated by the difference between ponds and rivers. Especially how ponds and rivers treat algae, the next time you look at an old pond, observe how it is almost always covered with a film of dust and algae. If you look at a pond located in an urban environment, you’ll also find plenty of plastic waste on its surface. On the other hand, a river is almost always clean.

Do you know why?

Because of constant movement, the water in a river is always moving to the next place. Any dust/debris will move to the ocean. On the other hand, the water in a pond has nowhere to go. So it will stay right there collecting dust.

The same goes true for our life. If you are not moving, not dreaming, and not pushing yourself to the next level, you will stagnate and die.

Be like a river, not a pond. Dream Big.

Execution is the Key

Here I want to share a story with you. The story of my first ever solo trip. So here it goes.

It was a Wednesday evening, and I had spent the last two weeks planning a trip with my roommate. We were supposed to leave that night to enjoy the long weekend at a hill station. But the plan went stale. Rain and hailstorm hit the town we were in, and my roommate had to stay back for work. I felt horrible since I was really looking to the trip.

That’s when I called another friend who made such trips quite often. I reached out to her for some consolation but received encouragement instead.

“Just go!” she said. “Just go to the bus station first, and we’ll figure it out from there. What’s the worst that could happen? You’ll not find a bus to the destination and have to come back, right?”

The argument was solid, and I had no counter.

So I haphazardly packed my bags and headed to the bus station only to find that it was super crowded. The destination I was supposed to go to had an upcoming event, and thousands of people from my city were going there.

I lost hope and assumed that I wouldn’t find a bus and would have to go back home. But guess what! I did! I found a comfortable A/C bus well within my budget, leaving the station in an hour.

What Happened Next?

Well, to sum it up. I had no accommodation booked either. But while roaming around the town at the destination, I found the perfect place to stay. I ended up spending three days in that town. My first magical solo trip!

Ooty. My First Solo Trip

Lesson

Whenever I think about that trip, I always imagine what it would’ve been like if I never left for the bus station. What if I had just stayed back wallowing in self-pity and cursing my luck? What if I had postponed the trip to some other time and never took the leap of faith.

Luckily, I will never have to find out.

Stop planning. Start doing. Cherish your soul with unchartered territories and unplanned experiences. Life will happen on your way to the destination. Planning is just a tiny piece of the puzzle; the majority of it is execution.

Onwards and Upwards.

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Shubham Garg

A story seller and an aspiring freelancer practicing zen in this simulated world of hypothetical beings that are a construct of my own imagination.