The world is often unpredictable, especially when people are asked to consider their futures. Many people have plans that can sometimes be surprisingly detailed, but nobody ever really knows how their dreams will work out.
That doesn't mean it's silly to dream. In fact, the future's uncertainty makes it clear that nobody ever really knows what will help their dreams come true. And in the case of one of the most famous and influential minds of the 20th century, a veritable empire was arguably born from just one simple childhood gift.
Walt's favorite
In an obituary for Cinderella voice actress Ilene Woods, CNN reported that she once recalled a poignant exchange with Walt Disney.
As she said, "Once I went into his office, and he said to me, 'You're my favorite heroine, you know.'"
"Something about that story"
In response, she asked, "You mean Cinderella?" and he answered in the affirmative.
He soon added, "There's something about that story I associate with." And while Woods believed it was the rags-to-riches aspect of Cinderella's story, that may be only part of it. As it tuned out, Walt and Cinderella had a lot in common.
His Missouri upbringing
According to Ancestral Findings, Walt Disney spent much of his childhood on his father's farm in Marceline, Missouri, before moving to Kansas City at the age of ten.
But in both places, Disney had a strict childhood that was light on entertainment and full of labor.
A clear interest
As a boy in Kansas City, Disney tried to spend as much time at his friend Walter Pfeiffer's house as possible because Pfeiffer's family were fans of the theater that introduced Disney to Vaudeville and movies.
Neither would have gotten much traction as a topic of discussion at home.
A domineering father
As Ancestral Findings described, Elias Disney imposed a moral code on his five children that emphasized working them as hard as possible.
Not only did this not leave much time for play, but Disney's father actively prevented his children from having games or toys. If it didn't involve manual labor, it was a hard sell with him, to say the least.
An exhausted adolescence
There's always something to be done on a farm, but the work ethic Disney's father instilled in him did not abate when his family moved to Kansas City.
There, he bought a newspaper route and forced both Disney and his older brother, Roy, to work it.
Grueling labor day and night
Every day, Elias would awaken Disney and Roy at 3:30 am so they could deliver their newspapers before school.
And while the brothers stayed on top of their homework, they also had to deliver the paper's evening edition once they came home from school.
All for nothing
One might expect such hard work to at least earn the boys some money, but Elias kept all their earnings from the paper route.
The stated reason for this was that he believed they were too young to know the value of money.
But nothing stopped Disney's dream
Despite this unfair arrangement, Disney was able to scrape some money of his own together by secretly buying his own papers and selling them independently.
He also spent his noon recess at school working at a local candy store. His father never found out about either of these side jobs.
His kind of education
With this secretly-earned money, Disney would take classes at the Kansas City Art Institute on Saturdays and arrange for a correspondence course about drawing cartoons.
He also took night classes at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts while he was in high school.
A mother's rare intervention
Although Disney and his brother Roy each put in their own work to make their shared, lifelong dream happen, it's unclear how far they would have gone without a small but important gift.
According to Ancestral Findings, Flora Call was rarely able to offer her son much comfort or protection from his father's domineering ways.
The gig that started it all
While on the farm in Marceline, a retired local doctor once paid Disney to draw his horse.
Even before he met Pfeiffer, this assignment first sparked his interest in the arts.
An attempt to nip it in the bud
As Disney explored his interest in drawing, he would recreate the comics in the newspapers his father subscribed to. He also started to hone his skills with crayons and watercolors.
Unsurprisingly, Elias disapproved of his son's interest in drawing any more than anything else a child might actually find fun.
A mother's love
Although Elias was notoriously hard-nosed, Flora was able to get through to him on at least one matter.
Not only did she intervene in her husband's efforts to stop his son from drawing, but she even convinced him to buy Disney a set of colored pencils and some drawing paper.
At long last
Disney was reportedly overjoyed with his gift and spent every spare moment drawing.
Although it's clear that he didn't have many as a kid between school, work, and secret work, it was a joy he carried with him all his life.
The Cinderella connection
And based on the impression Neal Gabler got while writing his book Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination, that joy carried through some of the darkest times in his life.
As he saw it, drawing allowed Disney to escape into his imagination.
A solemn wish
In a review of Gabler's book, The Guardian described him as portraying Disney's creations as a fantasy world he made for himself to feel safe and loved.
As Gabler put it, "During a peripatetic childhood of material and emotional deprivation, at least as he remembered it, he began drawing and retreating into these imaginative worlds."
Elias's children leave
Disney's eldest brothers, Herbert and Raymond, left home as soon as they came of age and wanted nothing to do with the family once they had.
By 1918, he had a similar inclination and tried to enlist in the armed forces so he could be shipped off overseas during World War I.
Disney gets away
Although the army rejected him because he was underage, he was able to slip under the Red Cross's radar by forging the birth date on his birth certificate.
As such, he became an ambulance driver for them and was sent to France.
Art followed him everywhere
However, the armistice that ended World War I had already taken place by the time he arrived, so his duties turned out to be far more limited than he expected.
As such, Disney spent some time drawing cartoons on the side of his ambulance and got some of his art published in the Army's newspaper, Stars and Stripes.
A start to his true career
Although he returned to Kansas City after almost a year in France, that didn't mean he was back under his father's thumb again.
This time, Disney had taken a job as an apprentice artist at the Pesmen-Rubin Commercial Art Studio.
From humble beginnings to great heights
Disney's time at Pesmen-Rubin would prove to be the start of an animation career that blossomed into a media empire.
Whether through his company's animations, the theme parks that eventually followed, or both, millions throughout the world can now say Disney at least partially shaped their childhoods.
A stubborn father
But even after Disney's success started to become a worldwide phenomenon, his father didn't feel any differently about the work he devoted his life to.
And that disapproval would extend all the way to his final days.
It was never good enough
At the end of it all, no amount of money nor cultural capital could make Elias approve of his son's lifelong work.
As far as he was concerned, animation still wasn't a real job.
Their relationship worsened
According to The Guardian, this disapproval grew into outright resentment as his views made his son's success seem undeserved.
This resentment would eventually destroy what had remained of their relationship by that point.
Away on business
By the end of Elias's life, his relationship had soured so much with his son that his passing didn't even change Disney's schedule.
Disney was on a business trip when he heard the news.
A void among the mourners
In Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination, Gabler described Disney as refusing to cut his trip short.
As a result, he would end up missing his father's funeral entirely.
An echo of a family history
According to Ancestral Findings, Disney's absence echoed a similar blow from his parents when he married Lillian Bounds at the age of 24.
Neither of them had attended his wedding.
He lived to see his legacy
But while his father's resentment obviously stung, Disney would grow to learn just how unpopular Elias's opinion of his work was.
Because even at the time of his passing, it was obvious that Disney had made a world-changing impact.
Truly ubiquitous
According to The Guardian, more than 240 million people had seen a Disney movie by the time of his death in 1966. Additionally, 80 million had read a book published by Disney, and 100 million had watched a Disney TV show.
And, of course, his legacy has only expanded since then.
