You don’t have to have a dream
by Tim Minchin
Penguin
Internationally acclaimed songwriter, singer, pianist, comedian, actor and writer Tim Minchin is probably best-known for composing the music and lyrics to Matilda the Musical and Groundhog Day, and as the co-creator of the award-winning TV comedy Upright.
Minchin graduated from the University of Western Australia with a Bachelor of Arts and then went on to complete an Advanced Diploma in Contemporary Music at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts.
Both Minchin’s father and grandfather are surgeons in Perth, but Tim can boast that he has more doctorates than the two of them combined. He has three honorary ‘pseudodoctorates’ as he likes to call them, although he is very proud of them.
On each occasion of receiving an honorary doctorate, Minchin has given an inspirational key note address to the collection of graduating students. When reflecting on the speeches, he saw that they were held together by his “science-loving, pragmatic-progressive, reality-romantic worldview” and has put them together in a book.
Minchin realised that he wasn’t in a position to give career advice because he never really had what most people would call a proper job, but he has learnt quite a lot of life-lessons – the greatest of which is that “you don’t have to have a dream”.
Getting by with micro-ambitions, he debunks the advice handed down by so many supposedly learned people that you have to have a goal in order to be successful.
“Life will sometimes seem long and tough. And you will sometimes be happy and sometimes sad. And then you’ll be old. And then you’ll be dead. There is only one sensible thing to do with this empty existence, and that is: fill it.”
Peppered with great illustrations, the book is full of wicked down-to-earth wit, with just a touch of anarchy and a whole lot of inspiration.
Lezly Herbert
