Every night, when the world outside grew quiet, Emma would sit at her desk beside her bedroom window, gaze at the moon, and dream. Her room was small, but inside her mind, it was endless. Half-finished ideas covered her desk, sketches filled the walls and surrounded her. She had so many things she wanted to create and so many dreams about the person she hoped to become someday.
Sometimes, while gazing at the moon, her thoughts would drift because they called her strange. Why do they laugh whenever I talk about the future? Why do they say, Are you still dreaming? Do you really think you’re going to do something great? But she would try again to control her thoughts and continue dreaming as she stared at the moon. It was so difficult, though, and she couldn’t. She forced a smile and pretended she had never heard any of it, but those words and voices seemed to grow louder.
Then she stared at her reflection in the mirror on her desk. Slowly, she ran her fingers through her hair, then held her head in her hands. For the first time, she wondered if maybe they were right. Maybe my dreams are too big and impossible to reach. Maybe the future I imagine is nothing more than a beautiful illusion. Her eyes filled with tears as she looked around her room. Then, through the blur of her tears, she noticed the sketches on her walls. She remembered how each of them had begun with nothing but an idea, a little courage, and belief. Suddenly, she smiled through her tears. Because she realized that the designs on her walls, created by the people she had admired, had once existed only in the imagination of those people. Every dream, every beautiful thing the world had ever known, had once been nothing more than a thought in someone’s mind.
She picked up her notebook, wiped away her tears, and opened to a fresh page. She wrote one sentence: