On aiming high

While it may not be the best thing to do whilst practicing target shooting, I find it really good advice. Take your goals and make them the biggest that you possibly can - why, though? Why just get disappointing with everything? For example, if you decide that you want to aim for the goal of becoming President of the United States (although why anyone would is beyond me...), if you don't, you'll be crushed, that's the end of your dreaming, kaput, gone forever, time to go back to bed. Right?
Wrong.
The higher you aim, the higher you go. You might not reach where you wanted, but you will go farther than if you had aimed lower. We'll use the allegory of a target and a gun, though I know I previously advised against this (don't try this at home, kids!). There's a bird on the top of a tree that you want to hit (but make sure it's not a mockingbird - its a sin to kill those!...now I'm just being weird...) There's another bird farther down, too, but you want to hit the top one. You shoot, you miss the first bird, but you hit the second.
But what if you had aimed for the second bird? If you had only aimed as high as that bird, you might have missed it and gone even lower. Now, this isn't an insult to sharpshooters, who could probably hit it anyway, and I'm not saying to people who can't aim (like me) that they're goals have been buried with a grave marker. This is strictly allegorical, and a pretty badly written at that, but I'm hoping you get the point. Pope Francis said the words "aim high" at World Youth Day, and I plan to. I've always been a big dreamer with big plans for a big future. But there's a difference between wishing and hoping and planning and actually aiming for the goals. I say again that the higher you aim, the higher you'll go! And in the words of Les Brown:
"Shoot for the moon...even if you miss, you'll land somewhere among the stars."
-Rhian