Dreams Do Come True

Mid 2006

I was in the middle of a vast tea plantation. Tea bushes were all that I could see around me. I was alone. It was cold. It was midnight. It was very dark.

I was in the middle of a leadership training program held by the army. The trainees had been intentionally brought up to a remote area in West Java. At midnight, we were dropped (one by one) off in the middle of a tea plantation and had to find our way out of the vast maze of tea bushes through clues spread around the plantation (sometimes they were hidden and unreadable).

The only lights that guided me were the moonlight and lights from a distant factory.. I didn’t know what the factory produces, but I fell in love with it instantly. It was beautiful. It was huge. The lights highlighted a thick vaporous substance coming out of the factory’s chimneys. It couldn’t be smoke, I thought, because it was pure white.

The first thing that came into my mind was that this factory must have had very good business. Imagine a factory in the middle of nowhere that operates 24/7. If not for a strong revenue stream, no way would anyone run a factory like this. Ideas on what the factory was producing raced in my head throughout the night. I even stopped several times just to sit down and look at it from afar, with a burning desire of someday owning it.

Fast forward 2 years

I had totally forgotten about the factory. Immediately after coming home from the training, I abandoned my unyielding attempt to find out more about it and quickly focused back on the businesses i were running.

Until I met an entrepreneur who invited me to visit his factory in West Java.

Unsuspecting, I went through the long 5/6 hour drive to the site. Nearing the factory location, I suddenly jumped in my seat. Looking around, I thought to myself, this place looks very familiar. I’ve walked these roads before. I’ve sat in those fields before. I went inside that village before. It was dejavu. All of a sudden, the car came out of a sharp bend and there it was, smack in front of me on the horizon, the factory that i dreamed of owning several years ago. You’ve guessed it, turns out that the businessman owned the place.

I know i know, the title of this article is “dreams do come true” and I haven’t actually owned the place (yet). But a strange twist of fate brought me back to the factory, brought me back to my dream. Fate injected me with more optimism. An optimism that i’m on the right track to achieve my dream (or something similar).

Keep on dreaming….. and have faith that dreams do come true.

with love,
arlo