Here I will not be talking about the boiling controversy around the Nike “Dream Crazy” ad–a controversy about the individuals in the ad, not the ad’s message. Nor do I mean to take the ad as a logical argument; its primary purpose is to promote the Nike brand, and its message serves that end. I bring up the ad only because it stands out as an example of a well-worn and highly (U.S.) American idea: the idea that (a) a certain kind of success, involving money and fame, is all-important; (b) the ones who succeed are the ones who “dream big”; and (c) that such dreamers should let nothing and no one stand in their way. No obstacle is an obstacle, no qualm a qualm; the true champion reduces all hindrances to nothing, simply through power of the mind.
“If people say your dreams are crazy,” says Colin Kaepernick, the ad’s narrator, “if they laugh at what you think you can do–good. Stay that way.” So far, I have no objections. Then he continues: “Because what nonbelievers fail to understand is that calling a dream crazy is not an insult. It’s a compliment. Don’t try to be the fastest runner in your school, or the fastest in the world. Be the fastest ever. Don’t picture yourself wearing OBJ’s jersey. Picture OBJ wearing yours. Don’t settle for homecoming queen or linebacker. Do both.” A little later: “Believe in something, even if it means sacrificing everything.” The ad continues for a while longer, and he says a bit more, but this is enough for now.
On the surface, the words of the ad sound profoundly humanitarian. People should not hold themselves back; no one has to be inferior to anyone else, or to a dream, or even to the greatest dream imaginable. Each of us, no matter where or how we grew up, has access to infinity.
Yet this version of infinity gives me qualms. Why should a dream consist of becoming the best at something–not only the best right now, but the best ever known? First of all, to the extent that the best can be identified and measured, it has room for only one person; not everyone can be the best. If everyone’s primary goal were to be the best, life would quickly become “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”
Or to put it differently: there are people who don’t worry about whether they themselves are the best ever at what they do; it is their work that they want to perfect, something within the work that they seek out. Many fields demand this kind of focus. To be an excellent musician, you must be listening intently to the music, working your way toward what you hear or want to hear in your mind. Thoughts about being the best musician of all time might distract you. For sure, there are musicians who aspire to make a mark in history, who hope to go down as one of the best–but others reach heights without thinking in those terms. How does one determine, moreover, who is the best, even in athletics, where numbers are ready at hand? It is not as easy as it may sound.
Second, if you aspire to do your work well, whatever it may be, without necessarily hoping to become the best ever, this does not make you a conformist or lesser person. Striving for visible superiority is highly conformist; voices from all corners tell you to “go for it” and applaud you if you do so. But there are many successes that do not look like an athlete leaping in the air and hurling a ball; there are successes in finding a phrase, discovering a new angle (so to speak) on a math problem, making a delicious gulyás, teaching a class, raising a child, sitting at a dying person’s bedside. This does not mean that a person should eschew all competition; competition has a place. But not all good works look like athletic championship; not all unusual things look alike.
The third problem here–a problem with “growth mindset” as well–is that such an ideal bids us think only in terms of striving, dreaming, going beyond the limit. Any sense of limitation, any thought of mortality, becomes taboo or at best undesirable. Don’t say that you will die one day; dream and act as though you could live forever. But human immortality is not as great as it sounds. The body wears down; the world gets crowded. An endless life could be miserable. Moreover, as long as we have known, and as long as we know now, every human and animal life comes to an end. Do we have to pretend this isn’t true? There’s something shrill and forced about the dogma of limitlessness; it looks away from life.
I do not mean that people should curb their dreams because they will die one day. But it is possible to live with bounds and boundlessness at once: to strive beyond what we know, to carry dreams of different kinds, but also to admit to the end of things, the need for sleep, the presence of others, the worth of simple acts.
I took the photo at the Gulyásfesztivál in Szolnok.
Once in a while, for fun, I take some quiz or questionnaire that has me rate my agreement with various statements, for instance: “I like to have things planned out in advance.” What am I to say? Do I agree with it or not? Is it even possible to respond in the abstract? Yes, I like to plan things in advance. In less than two weeks I leave from Istanbul, where I will be teaching for two weeks at the wonderful 
