The Dreams We See

“Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken winged bird that cannot fly.” – Lanton Hughes, American poet.

All my life, I’ve grown up reading stories. So have you, probably, and many other people.

I accept I was a nerd back in high school, though not your typical nerd from out of a teenage novel! I missed my P.E. classes to read books in the library. Though it was clearly against the rules, the grey-haired librarian didn’t seem to mind. Nor did she ever complain to anyone that I spent a half of the school hours hiding in there.

When she didn’t have a class, she’d choose books and give them to me. She even let me borrow two books when we were allowed to take only one!

On a fine autumn day, she asked me if I write stories.

Being only in sixth grade, her question took me by surprise.

“No,” I replied. “I only read.”

“You should try to write a story someday,” she told me.

“But no one will read it,” I stated.

“I will,” she promised.

I never got a chance to give her my story to read. I left school the same year and I didn’t really have a chance to contact her.

How or when I began writing is a memory that has already left my mind. All that I remember is that I used to write secretly. I was afraid of how my piece of writing would be received by an audience. In between classes, in the lunch breaks, I would sit in a lone corner and scribble a poem or two in the last pages of some copy. I knew no teacher bothered to look at the last pages and so, my little secret was safe.

Until one day. My English teacher interrupted a class and asked me to meet her in the staff room during the lunch break.

When I visited her, I found her reading something intently. As I walked closer, I realized that she was going through the little poems I had written.

“You write so beautifully!” she exclaimed.

I really didn’t know how to react. Was I supposed to be scared because she had found out? Or was I supposed to be happy because she felt it was good?

“Don’t ever give up,” she continued. “You have an extraordinary talent. Keep this dream alive and someday you’ll reach there.

She reminded me of my old librarian.

I found a confidence after hearing her. And since then, I’ve always shared my work with people.

People often ask me if I have ever dreamt of becoming a writer. That very question never fails to take me by surprise.

“Yes,” I tell them. “It is my dream to become a writer.”

It is a dream that has been with me for as long as I can remember. While some dreams come and go, this stays with me.

Someday, I’m going to write something for the old librarian to read. I remember her promise.

Someday, I’m going to thank her for igniting my dream.

Someday, I’m going to wake up and live my only dream.

I still remember a couple of lines from the same poem which i had scribbled at the back of my English copy. it reads like this-

“They told you, dreams are important,

That dreams are hidden somewhere in the sky, beneath the golden hue;

They told you to hold on to your dreams,

For sometimes, they find you.“