SOMETIMES, THE BEST GIFT FOR A DREAM IS SILENCE

Hani had always wanted to be a writer, and she was sure she had plenty of stories to tell: fables to spin, adventures to chronicle, sagas spanning generations. She just needed to complete her first manuscript, sell it to a big publishing house, and start living the writer’s life. But her manuscript languished as the months went by, and soon all her free hours were spent working shifts in her friend’s coffeehouse. She sipped bitter espresso while her dream life withered away.

One night, as she was busy working in the cafe, Hani caught sight of her—a woman who was slightly older and whose eyes seemed to recount a thousand stories—the writer Maya. The two women met by chance, and the brief meeting triggered a flow of air in the darkness when Hani admitted to her many of her dreams and fears.

"Sharing your dreams is like playing Russian roulette," Maya said. "It's risky."

Hani looked puzzled. "What do you mean?"

Maya smiled, her eyes sparkling. ‘Dreams are fragile things.’ She spoke softly. ‘When you talk about them, you expose them to criticism and doubt. Then there’s pressure to make them happen, and if you make your dream too public, you might end up sabotaging it before you even start.’

"But isn't sharing your dream a way to get support?" Hani asked, sounding unsure.

Maya shook her head. Yes, there is support. But with that comes exposure. You have come out, and now there are expectations. People can weigh you down with judgments. They will compare you with others. They will judge your progress. They may even doubt that you can achieve it.

Hani thought about what Maya had said. It had sounded so true. She remembered how once, when she had told some friends about her dream, it had come with patronising smiles and ‘Oh, that’s nice, Hani’ and ‘How cute’ and ‘How sweet’. The words to her had sounded like, ‘So you think you can write too, lovely?’ The seeds had been sown and began to grow.

"What should I do?" Hani asked, a sense of urgency creeping into her voice.

"Protect your dream," Maya replied, her gaze steady. "Nurture it in the quiet corners of your mind. Don't let the world's expectations and judgements dampen your passion. Write because you love it, not to impress others. Let your words be a reflection of yourself, not a show for an audience."

Hani listened to her advice. She stopped talking about her dream and instead focused on her craft. She wrote every day, her fingertips flying across the keyboard without giving her opinions a second thought. She wasn’t writing to be criticised or praised. She wrote to be free, for herself, honestly and completely, through the story that belonged to her and only her.

One year later, she was sitting in Maya’s apartment, installing herself at her small dining table with a manuscript in her hands, raw and pulsating. ‘It’s good,’ said Maya after reading it, ‘so good’ – and punched the air in triumph.

"You've done a great job, Hani," she said warmly. "You've protected your dream."

For the first time in years, she felt joy. She knew Maya had been right; sharing her dream wasn’t what had held her back. It was being affected by the outside world—by others’ judgements of her work—that had doomed her to failure. Having protected her dream from feedback and expectations, she freed it to blossom into something honest, resonant, and magnificent.

Hani's journey wasn't easy, but the experience taught her that a flower of a dream needs its sleep in the rich soil of self-belief, and it must be protected from the harm that the world wants to inflict on it, with its opinions and its conflicting expectations that don’t know anything about the true gift of the dream and its beauty that reside only in the heart of the dreamer. Sometimes, the best gift for a dream is silence, allowing it to flourish in the quiet sanctuary of one's own imagination.