A Pug Named Banker

When I was 9 years old, my friend Andrew wanted a pug named Banker and I was so impressed by his dream that I made it my own.

What exactly was so special about his dream? Pugs are cute, but not the "top dogs" on the totem pole of dogs to want. When you're a kid, you want a husky. Or you want a dog that's really fluffy and cuddly, like a Labradoodle. Or if you're me, you want the dog you know the most about, which was the greyhound (the world's fastest dog—not unlike myself at that time), and also the mascot of Assumption University. So I had every reason to want a greyhound, and no reason to want any other dog.

What stood out to me about Andrew's wish was how it took the expectations of wishes and dreams as I knew them, and turned those expectations upside down. As a world-class daydreamer, I explored visions of fantastic grandeur every single day. I couldn't make up my mind for what my life would be like—I just knew it would be earth-shatteringly awesome. (I am still working on that.) But everything I could imagine had a theme of being great with a capital G.

There is nothing over-the-top about wanting a pug named Banker. But that's what made it such a great dream. Your ambitions do not need to be legendary.

Andrew is now an architect. He never said he wanted to be an architect, but I remember playing Minecraft with our friends, and his builds were always the most elegant, the most sophisticated, the most aesthetically pleasing. It's funny the way things start, and the way they end up. And it makes perfect sense that he's an architect now.

He understood, when we were nine, that the magnitude of your dreams does not define you, or really shape your future at all. It is the magnitude of your ability to bring creativity into the world, to share it with others, and to make the world a better place as a result. Andrew understood that before I did. He helped me realize it then, and reminds me of it now, in the way he lives his life.

The funny part about Andrew's dream is that he never got his pug. He got Chester instead, who was everything Banker could have been and more.