Dreams.
It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live.
– J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. –
What are dreams, really? Are they just fleeting thoughts, tucked away in the back of our minds, waiting to fade like distant memories? Do they heal and disappear, like a small wound on a finger—just another passing mark of time? Or are they something far greater—something that fuels us, shapes us, and carries us forward even when everything else seems to stand still? Perhaps dreams are not just wishes, but the very force that pushes us through the darkness, reminding us that no matter how many times we fall, we can always rise again. Maybe they are not just meant to be achieved, but to teach us who we are along the way.
I once had a dream, a very big one. It started when I was about ten or eleven years old. I had a bunch of friends by that time, the ones I used to call "friends from home", because they were the ones with whom I used to play football and even baseball in the neighborhood, mostly during the time of vacations, as well as doing silly kid's things that I will not go even deeper at what they were and which things we used to do. At school it was a completely different story. I was very tiny and skinny, with glasses that were almost as big as my head, and with a "fashion" style that was nerdy to say the least–I blame my parents for that by all means possible. So, because of that stereotype, I was bullied a lot. The saddest thing is that bullying at that time was described and put just as "something kids do" or "it's a kid's thing". But I was only aware of the implicancies and consequences when I reach adulthood many years later.
Finding The Dream
Because of that I never really liked school at all. So I was always looking for something else and I started watching a lot of tennis on TV. It was during the years where Marcelo "Chino" Ríos was everywhere, he was the new tennis star and on its way to -ultimately- becoming World's #1 player. I remember looking at the guy play with such ease and simplicity, like he wasn't even trying, completely effortless. Until the day came when he beat Andre Agassi –If I'm not wrong it was at the Indian Wells tournament– and the only thing I was able to hear were the celebrations and screams of joy from the entire neighborhood, as well from my parents that were in the room next to mine or in the kitchen watching it too. It was so profoundly loud that something inside of me just kicked in: I wanted exactly that. So I went to where my parents were and told them that I wanted to play tennis, to which they looked at each other and said "ok, let's see".
My family has never been one of wealth. We managed to live well, have a decent car, buy the house with bank loans, me and by brother had the "luck" of attending a paid school, but that was it and we were all happy, which was the most important thing in the end. Tennis though, was a completely different scenario. It's one of the most expensive sports in the world. You need to buy tennis rackets, sport shoes, the clothes, have a coach and the means to be able to play tournaments and travel. Luckily, the bank at which my Dad worked at the time had a sports facility fairly close to our house, and kids were able to take classes there, at no cost. So, one day we went, bought a tennis racket for kids, which weren't so expensive, a bit of simple clothes, shoes and one morning we showed up at the stadium and my Dad signed me up. I was in full ecstasy, there were like four or five tennis courts, four professional football fields, a gym, and so on. It was perfect.
So I started going every Saturday at 9:00 AM, for just one hour, which was the time kids had to learn the basic stuff like moving around the court, hitting the ball, taking and hanbling the racket properly, learning the rules, among other very simple mundane stuff. Thing is I was good, and I was as able to learn quicker than the rest of the kids that had the same age as me. So just within a couple months time, they told my Dad that I needed to climb to the next level and train with bigger kids, just in age, because I was very tiny. From there it was heaven on earth, as I also started to get noticed by the adults that trained and played there, where a bunch of them were my Dad's co-workers, and they were asking the coaches for me to "spar with them", which in reality was about filling their own ego of being able to hit the ball harder and feel better about themselves, because yes, they were playing with this kid. What they didn't expected was the kid to basically kick their asses so bad, to the point where in many occasions rackets were broken into pieces, and screams and loud slurs were heard from everywhere in the complex.
I got so good at one point, that after people finished playing football in the fields around, a large amount of them came to the tennis court to watch tennis, and yes, it was me playing versus a adults. My Dad from time to time used to receive comments at the office like "hey, what's the deal with your son? He kicked my ass the past weekend". Imagine his chest being filled with absolute proud.
Shortly after I wasn't just going one hour on Saturdays, it was on Sundays too, from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM. I trained with the kids during the morning, and then it was full playing time with the adults until very late. As the years went by they also started doing classes during the week, which I obviously committed to and started to go, so my parents asked the school to allow me to leave early, as I had to go train, three days a week, as well as the entire weekend. We we start going to play in tournaments and I was living my dream, the thing that I've just witnessed on TV just a couple of years ago.
The Breaking Point
But as most stories in life, there's always a turning point. Turns out the "coaches" there –if they can be even called that– were just profiting from the classes, the interest was not on developing players, it was just a money-making machine. To at such extend that later we found out that one of the best tennis schools in Santiago had interest in me going to train there, but we weren't informed of it, which in retrospective could have –eventually– turned around my life for good.
I ended up eventually going to that school, but it was completely different. Real and hard training sessions, more courts to play in, a proper gym to complement tennis –as it always should've been. The downside is that by that time I had around seventeen, which made me "older" compared to the other kids with whom I trained with, who had between thirteen and fifteen, so I was in total disadvantage, considering the fact as well that these kids started playing when they had about 8 or 9, or even before that. So the competitiveness was high, and I had much more to prove than the rest, in order to be considered and given the chance to play tournaments. It was so intense and I had to put so much effort, that I ended almost breaking both my ankles, and had to stop four almost two months. And that wasn't the worst that I would have to face, at least yet.
One day during summer, Fernando González came by the stadium to train. We were all excited. This is the guy that was currently one of the best chilean players and who was gonna leave a mark in the sport. We all gathered around the court where he was playing, sitting in the opposite side of him to watch the speed at which he hit the ball. He was able to do it so amazingly fast and hard, that if you blinked, the ball was already in your face. By the time he ended his training, we went inside the court to try mimicking and replicating every single thing he did. I was used to play in "clay" courts that are made of crushed brick or stone. This one was a "hard court", made of concrete and that can eventually lead to knee, ankle, and lower back issues over time, which is something very recurrent in this sport.
So there we were for about an hour and as I was preparing to do a serve (that's when you throw the ball over your head and hit it with the racket), I felt a small weird sensation in the left side of my back, but I didn't made much of it. I threw the ball up, jumped with my two feet as hard as I could and hit it. On the way down, my entire left side from my waist until my toes was completely numb, and I fell to the floor. I could not feel any of it and I was in shock.
They took me into the gym and called my parents, and in about an hour or less my Dad arrived and we went directly to a medical sports institution, where they performed exams to see what could be the problem and provide a diagnose. A few moments after the doctor came and said "we need to take him and perform surgery", at which point I looked at my Dad not understanding why and trying to make sense of it, he rapidly turned and screamed at the guy so many things that I cannot even repeat because one I don't remember, and two because mostly it was a mix of "fuck you's", "go eat shit" and other things that I had never even heard come out of my Dad's mouth. So we left and headed back home so I could rest a bit.
After a few days we went to a kinesiologist that said it was due to a severe scoliosis, for which I needed treatment that would last around three to four months, if not more, depending on how my progress could be and how much pain I was gonna feel after the treatment ended, and then slowly come back to start training again.
The Unforced Error
It ended up being around six to seven months total, while in the meantime and as I was on treatment, I started going out with friends to parties, began drinking, got to know drugs of all sorts and I started getting into that life, which I assumed was the usual one for any "normal" kid by that age. I also knew my first girlfriend, as well as having my first heartbreak, and I eventually forgot and cut-off anything close and related to tennis. I wasn't even able to watch in on TV. And because by the time the treatment ended I was gonna graduate from school, I was kind of forced to start thinking about studying something, which I didn't had any idea about since the last seven years all I had known was tennis. My grades weren't remotely close to good and I had never thought about it to be honest, but I had to.
Since I always had been "good" at drawing I picked Industrial Design at a technical university, which was the only thing I was able to access because of my school performance and my tests results. Long story short, I failed every single subject at university, except english. I kept partying a lot, getting high every day, adding up harder drugs to my portfolio of new things to try, coming back home just to sleep and getting up in the morning to go back to class, and it was like that for the entire first year. I felt completely and utterly miserable. No motivation, no clear horizon, nothing to hold on to.
The first semester of the second year was pretty much the same, until the final day where I went to a party that was like no other I had been before. It was crazy, countless bottles of alcohol everywhere, a large table with bowls of cocaine on one side, others with weed, and the rest with stuff I didn't know what they were. I got so fucked up that at one point I just collapsed on the sofa and fell asleep. When I managed to wake up it was already night time, so I grabbed my backpack and went to the bus stop. I was so disoriented that I took the bus in the opposite direction to where my home was, which I didn't knew because I fell asleep on it, again. So I stopped the bus, got out and went to the subway, which I also took the wrong way. I was so distressed and starting to panic, that I just called my Dad so he could pick me up somewhere and get me home, which he obviously did as he had done many times before and he would do many times during the years ahead.
On the way home, he didn't asked me anything but he wasn't angry neither. At one moment when we stopped at a red light, he just grabbed my hand and said "hey, you will be okay", which I just remembered the next day after I woke up feeling as if the world just fell on my head. It was like he knew everything, he was aware of everything, but he never judge me, he just let me be. He respected my process and all of what had to come with it. Looking back at it now, almost 20 years later, that was pure love at its essence.
The Final Set
After that I knew something had to change, and it had to start with me. The pain on my back wasn't there anymore, so one day I just headed to the tennis school and started training. At first it was painfully hard, my body was different as well as my physical condition, which was a shame, but I wasn't gonna give up. I kept going, every single day, until I managed to get consistency and improving. Luckily, there's something that doesn't go away just like that: talent, and don't want to sound arrogant but I had it.
Two months went by, three months, four, I kept on training pursuing my dream and there, once again, reality hit me. I was already 20 years old, and by that time for a tennis player you should be competing at the highest level, if not winning tournaments at least being known, but I wasn't, not even close.
So one day my coach approached me in the stadium, and we sat to speak. He said that if I really wanted to pursue this as a career, it was necessary for me to leave Chile, train and play abroad. They had all the connections, the ways to help me getting noticed, but there was only one thing they could not help me with: money.
After that conversation, I spoke with my parents about it and it was a no-go. There wasn't even a chance because we didn't have the means. And just like that, the dream was gone. I never grabbed a racket with my hands again.
The Journey Beyond One Dream
It is not true that people stop pursuing dreams because they grow old. They grow old because they stop pursuing dreams.
– Gabriel García Márquez –
Even though everything you've read so far may sound like a sad story of broken hearts and shattered dreams, the truth is, it is anything but that. If there's one thing I’ve learned through the years, it’s that a dream ending doesn’t mean the dreamer has to stop dreaming. Because life is not about achieving just one dream—it’s about having the courage to dream again.
For the longest time, I thought that when tennis was over, everything was over. That all the years of dedication, passion, and sacrifice had been for nothing. But what I failed to understand back then was that dreams are not meant to confine us—they are meant to shape us. And once a dream has fulfilled its purpose, it gives way to another.
The failure of one dream does not define you. How you rise from it does.
When One Dream Ends, Another Begins
Sometimes life doesn't give you what you want, not because you don't deserve it, but because you deserve so much more.
At some point, we all face moments when the thing we wanted most slips away. Whether it’s a career, a relationship, a passion, or a vision we held onto for years, there comes a time when we are forced to accept that things did not turn out as we had planned.
It took me years to understand that tennis was not the end of my story—it was the beginning of it. The discipline, the resilience, the drive it provided me—those things did not disappear when I let go of my racket. They became a part of me. And they became the foundation for new dreams I hadn’t even imagined yet.
"Do not be pushed around by the fears in your mind. Be led by the dreams in your heart."
– Roy T. Bennett –
It’s easy to feel lost when a dream fades, but maybe being lost isn’t a curse—it’s a sign that we are being given a new road to walk. We are taught to fear being lost, as if it means failure, as if it means we’ve taken a wrong turn somewhere along the way. But what if being lost is not the end of the path, but the beginning of something else?
When a dream falls apart, it feels like standing in the middle of a vast, empty space—no clear direction, no familiar signs, no certainty of what comes next. But in that space, something extraordinary happens: We are free.
Free from the expectations we placed on ourselves.
Free from the pressure of chasing something that may no longer serve us.
Free to explore, to rebuild, to discover something we never even imagined before.
So maybe being lost is not about losing our way, but about detaching of what no longer fits us. Because sometimes, we outgrow our dreams. And that’s not failure. That’s growth.
As when one door closes, we often stand there, staring at it, hoping it will open again, when in reality, life is gently nudging us toward another one—a door we would have never noticed, had we not been forced to look elsewhere. And the truth is, we are never truly lost. We are simply on the verge of something new.
So when a dream ends, don’t be afraid. Don’t see it as a failure. See it as an invitation. An invitation to dream again. To walk a different road. To build something new. Because as long as we keep moving, as long as we remain open to new possibilities, another dream will always be waiting.
Not all those who wander are lost.
– J.R.R. Tolkien –
Dreaming is Not About the Outcome, But About Who You Become in the Process
A dream is not meant to be captured, it is meant to be chased. And in the chase, we find ourselves.
A very hard reality to accept is, not every dream will come true. Some will change. Some will evolve. Some will break. But every single one of them will leave something in us.
Dreams are not about the trophies or the titles. They are about the lessons, the growth, and the people we become along the way. Tennis taught me about perseverance, about discipline, about pushing beyond pain—things that later helped me navigate the real challenges of life.
And if I could go back, I honestly wouldn’t change a thing. Because here’s another truth: the dream you once had, might not have been meant to last forever, instead it was meant to prepare you for what comes next.
So, What Comes Next? Just Keep Dreaming. Always.
The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.
– Eleanor Roosevelt –
If you’ve ever lost a dream—if you’ve ever felt like something you loved slipped through your fingers and left you feeling empty—just remember this:
You are not empty. You are not lost. You are just on the brink of discovering what’s next.
Dream again. Dream something new. Dream something bigger. Because as long as you are breathing, you have more stories to write, more paths to explore, and more dreams to chase.
And this time? Maybe, just maybe, it will be the dream that was meant to last.