This Is A Little Girl's Dream, Take It To Where It Wants Go

I randomly remembered the other day about a certain letter I received when I was a little girl. I fancied myself to be a future writer at the time, writing about something I did not fully know about. The plan was to start off teeny-bopper-ish and write in the tone of PS I Love You, or Sweet Valley High. Eventually I would conquer the period romantic novel category and be a young Judith McNaught or Jude Deveraux. I would sit at my typewriter for hours, with my half-forgotten coffee cup beside me. A cabin in Baguio, perhaps. A best-selling author. Book-signing events. And little girls I would write back to once I was successful To tell them that the dream is real. I was a little girl with a plan.

I don’t remember the publishing house’s name, nor the name of the man who wrote back. But what a lovely man he was, and I wish I did. The letter says that they currently cannot process book applications that don’t have an agent. So the man suggested that I find an agent. But to not stop writing while doing so. The letter wished me luck and it ended.

One page. One page that made a very big difference in the life of a child. At the time, there weren’t really any emails yet, so I had to send a hand-written letter across the globe. Can you imagine the joy of receiving the response, for a little girl who did not even know how truly far this publishing house was? How beautiful to think about now that you could send this much courage into the wind, across the globe, travelling miles and miles, exchanging warm hands several times. “This is a little girl’s dream, take it to where it wants go.”

As it turns out, I would not become a professional writer. My love for palette and paint overcame my love for the pen. Both had actually taken a backseat to life, initially. Life just happens and one has got to make choices. I still love writing. Poems and prose locked up in a hidden folder. Where I go to click when I need to breathe. Writing is a short breath for me, an extension of a moment where it is hard to find one.

If I credit this letter to anything, is that it has enhanced my bravado about things in life. I never stopped believing in the dream. That little girl still sits somewhere in me, albeit some days sleeping oh-so-deeply. As it is with most adults. It’s very easy to get lost in life, employment (in my case today, a desperate lack thereof), children, bills, worries of world peace, climate change. There are many things about the world we adults must worry about. And the little ones in us, the ones who were not afraid of monsters that come with names as Rejection and Failure, oftentimes get lost in the woods of daily life. Sometimes they get lost forever. And I find myself to be one of the lucky ones who can constantly peer through the door and call out to that little girl. The one who believes in dreams.

"It's time to come home, little girl."

It isn’t easy though. Because even as an adult there would be those who will impose the life they believe you should be living. The “right way to live”. If there is anything beautiful about aging, is that you learn to filter out such nonsense. But you have got to find it in you to have the strength to do so. The most satisfying life is a life you choose, The life that may be riddled with challenging, adult things on a daily cycle, but also peppered with the spice and bravado of that little girl who believes in dreams and chasing after what we throw in the wind. Like kites and confetti.

I wish that man lived a long and healthy life. I truly wish he was given love and affection in his old age. I wish he had little ones to also positively impact, as he did with me. Because across the globe, there was the little girl who had close to nothing. Only had an education, a loving and supportive family, and dreams in her pocket. And he had given something she will carry for the rest of her life.

Beautiful, beautiful hope. That if you want something, you can constantly work on getting better at it. That if you have a vision of what can be, it can be. Whether it be a painting, or a piece of writing, or the life you choose to live. That little girls with plans are powerful, and you can be anything you dream to be.

Any little human being needs an adult who believes in them. I hope you choose to be that big person to them today. Even if that little human being is also the you that needed it when you needed it. You don’t know how long they will carry that beautiful thing in them.