Yerevan /Mediamax/. Philanthropist and businessman Ruben Vardanyan thinks that "we need to link our success to the future, not the past”.

“I can assert that dreams, especially ambitious ones, only materialize when the dreamer looks forward, not backward.  At the moment, I don’t see a single dream around which the nation is united and is moving forward. I don’t mean  nostalgia about the past and our old "Armenia from sea to sea”. Yes we had Tigran the Great and were the first Christian country but I want to see more expectations and goals oriented towards the future.

We seem to link our successes to the past which means we don’t have a forward-looking dream.  This mentality is very dangerous. After all, if we really dreamed about “Armenia from sea to sea” we would have acted and taken small steps towards the dream. However, we don’t do that”, said Ruben Vardanyan in his interview on Media.am.

“I dream of a thriving Armenia and all our initiatives are aimed at reaching this dream. UWC Dilijan College and the Tatev aerial rope-way were not personal goals. I just want Armenia to become a country where people can thrive, develop and create with pleasure.

Our nation got used to preserving its identity and overcoming hurdles to survive. We have high expectations of the world (we want it to understand and pity us and condemn the guilty), but we don’t try to compete with the best and set high benchmarks for success”, stated the co-founder of IDeA Charitable Foundation.

“Our problem is that we have stopped setting the bar high for ourselves. I may be wrong, but that is the situation in Armenia's media universe which mostly confines itself to covering local issues. Of course, I don’t live in Armenia which means that perhaps I am not as aware of all the problems our citizens face as they struggle for survival. The only thing that I am sure of is that if we don’t try to look beyond our secluded state and local limits, nothing will change in our country”, concluded Ruben Vardanyan.