HAVE you ever heard the name Anton Yanakovich? He's actually a fantastically brilliant person who was, without a doubt, the greatest aeronautical mind in the known world. What you know of aviation today is a far cry from what Anton imagined, and had certain events not occurred in the manner that they did, what you know now of air travel would be very different, indeed. Never heard of him? How odd. Well let me tell you a little about Anton Yanakovich.
More than anything else, Anton wanted to fly. He dreamed of it constantly, and there was no end to what he imagined for himself and for the rest of humanity. He used to stand on rocks as high as he could climb and close his eyes imagining what it would be like to be in the flying machine he was going to invent. Feeling the wind rush over his arms as he held them out like an eagle, tilting them slightly from one side and then to the other while he soared over imagined countrysides. People close to Anton were very proud of his visions and supportive of his ideas and notions of what it would be like. They too, had the dream of flight, but simply couldn't grasp the required insight to make it happen in the way that Anton had. Instead, they lived vicariously through his visions and hoped he would achieve what they had, or could, not.It should be mentioned that Anton's notion was fully formed and mechanically sound when he was only nineteen. More surprising is that Anton mastered these principles of flight and aerodynamics a full generation before Leonardo Davinci was even born and five hundred years before the Wright Brothers would amaze the word at Kittyhawk.
Now Anton's flying machine was like nothing we know of aviation today. His machine would fly faster, longer, higher, could do absolutely anything regardless of the forces applied to it, and did so with the pilot and passengers having no ill effects as are sometimes felt even with today's technological advances. Passengers simply would enjoy it as much as he did. So, if this flying machine was so innovative and so much more fantastic and amazing, why do we not have his idea instead of the one the Wright Brother's made? Here's the simple and very painful answer.
Anton was a dreamer, and that is all.
Everything that Anton could have done, he didn't. Everything that was possible given what he had at his disposal, was unused. He lived inside of his own imagination with a notion of perfected flight soaring in his head until the day he died, and took everything that he knew of the grand flying machine with him to his grave. five hundred years later the most rudimentary aspects of his flying machine would be rediscovered. So why did it take so long? Because while Anton was absolutely correct and actually would have flown, he simply dreamed, and the Wright Brothers went out and built a plane. No, it wasn't anything remotely close to what Anton would have brought to the world, and what he could have made was superior in every way save one. He didn't do it. The Wright Brothers had within them something that Anton did not.
At first glance, it would seem as though the more beneficial response would have been Anton's; simply concede and satisfy oneself with the dream alone. Anton allowed the notion alone to nestle inside of him. The Wright Brother's, however, felt an unrealized dream as an itch that could not be satisfactorily scratched, or like a slow burning ember that needed to be shifted loose from the ashes. To them, a dream was merely the beginning, not the end, and the difference is what makes the Wright Brother's be remembered for what they made and did, not so much what they dreamed. For Anton however, everything he knew, and his dream, would simply disolve into the ether of history and take all that limitless potential with him when he left this earth.
It doesn't matter that he imagined a greater, more superior, machine, or that what he knew would have undoubtedly given us the ability to leave the ground and reach the stars centuries earlier than we did. It didn't happen because he satisfied himself with stopping at the dream alone and believing that was enough. The greatest of regrets we should have, is that when Anton died, they dropped shovelfulls of dirt onto his head, and by default his dreams as much as any other part of his body.
Dreaming is a wonderful thing, and inside a mind there is no boundary to what can be imagined. But before there is a dream, a wish must be there. A desire and a yearning for that which we see as the root of happiness. It is the spark that lights the fire under our feet. Wishes are the progenitor of our dreams, and those dreams, drive us to accomplishing the goal that defines what we wish of ourselves.
The concept of failure never entered into Anton's mind either, whereas it not only entered into the realm of possibility with the Wright Brother's, but visited them with a regularity that proves the tenacity of their dream.
Perhaps the greatest gift a person who transforms thoughts into wishes and then propels them onward through a dream into a reality, is a memory. No longer a fanciful and contrived fiction of possibilities but a concrete and very real manifestation of what it is to think and believe.
Anton Yanakovich will not be remembered for all that he hoped and wished and dreamed, and for as amazing as they were and how correct he was,they dissapeared with him. The Wright Brother's, however are the exact opposite. They continue through history, day after day, and their legacy is compounded with every new frontier that we set our sets on. Each one driving ourselves through to the next one. And isn't that what we were attempting to do with a dream in the first place? To be moved onward to more dreams?
I am happy to admit that Anton Yanakovich is a mere fiction of my own thoughts, and did not ever, truly exist. He was nothing more than a thought in my head that became the vehicle to a wish of my own to show you the very real tangible relevance of a dream. His entire existence consisting of nothing greater than a single page. But without realized dreams, will we allow ourselves to be any different? what is the difference between a single unrealized page and the unspoken dreams of a lifetime. It's all relative.
Do not simply satisfy yourself with living dreams inside of your head. Try, strive, persist, and fail if you must in attempting to realize them, but it is a far greater thing to give credence to those dreams by your persistence to reach them than it is to claim a mute and shallow success for something that is merely a theoretical contrivance and in no way allowed you the happiness you expected from it.
Don't take my word for it, though. Ask yourself which you would prefer. Would you expect to experience and be defined by what it means to be happy by listening to another person tell you of it, or would you rather know it by your own experience? I saw a quote the other day that gives me my answer: "If you live your life based on the thoughts of others, what's the point to having your own?"
Go think, and then wish your idea of happiness. Then dream, but don't stop there. Please, don't stop there. Don't satisfy yourself with merely that. Give true relevance to your dreams by putting them into action through perseverance. Only then can you see the true value of a memory fulfilled and hold them in your hand as something you truly posses.
