If you aren’t, why aren’t you? Any time you try something in which you risk failure, or even try something new, you risk having people laugh at you. When you sacrifice something in your life to pursue your dream, you are met with scorn, even pity. Your ‘friends’ pity you because you are ‘throwing away’ your time, your money, your self-respect even, to make your life, or the lives of others, better.

“As I had occassioned daily to pass to and from the shipyard where my boat was in progress, I often loitered near the groups of strangers and heard various remarks as to the object of this new vehicle. The language was uniformly that of scorn, sneer, or ridicule. The loud laugh often rose at my expense, the dry jest, the wise calculations of loss or expenditures, the dull repetition of Fulton’s Folly. Never did an encouraging remark, a bright hope, a warm wish cross my path. Not once.” Robert Fulton, from his published notes.

Fulton, of course, invented the steamship — he single-handedly transformed the world of transportation and, some feel, enabled the Industrial Revolution.

What if Fulton had listened to his critics? What if Alexander Graham Bell had paid attention to people who laughed at his idea of transmitting sound over wires?

If you are going to be at the forefront of any field, if you’re willing to raise your head above the crowd to go after a dream, you may as well accept and embrace the fact that you’re going to be a target.

Little people who know no better will heap scorn and ridicule upon you, detract and deride your efforts. In the end though, you can take comfort in knowing that whether you accomplish your quest or not, you have grown. You can rise to bigger and better things. And the little people are little people still.