The Size of Dreams.

Dear Journal,

Children of all colour, nationality and religion dream equally. All children have the same bigness of dreams, they possess the same expandability of imagination, the same unemcumbered faith. But while some children grow up to be bigger children better-equipped to fulfill their dreams- more intelligent, more worldy-wise, more capable-, some lose their child inside forever and become adults.

Adults of different colour, nationality and religion do not dream equally. And more often than not, I wonder how brusquely evident this is among nations and how we conveniently shy away from this hideous revelation. As anti-American sentiment festers in and out of the nation, one thing still remains the same- the same ideals stand strong. Americans may hate their current President, they may be chagrined at their own foreign and military policies, and they may be ashamed at their current global image; Non-Americans may hate America’s current President, they may be chagrined at how America assumes the role of the global police self-righteously, and they may be shaking their heads in gloating pity at their current global image but one thing remains the same: The same stronghold that moved the nation to success and greatness still hovers over them and keeps the world watching. Their glorified ideals like equality, liberty and greatness is the stuff of legends, and keep their people motivated, hopeful and keep others enthralled and enchanted.

Adults don’t dream equally. While children share the same magnitude of grandeur in their dreams and in their hearts, adults need confirmation, yardsticks, history and a personal connection to convince themselves that they too, have a pre-requisital connection with this greatness.

I am grateful for the education I enjoy in Singapore. I am thankful for my chance to study Medicine at a subsidised cost. But I am terrified, terrified, terrified to imagine what my dreams may have or could have been like in a place that believed in more than just academic streaming, political straightness and economic survival. You need a certain degree of child-like nonchalance to dream big, and this place is full of but adults.

I think about the time I taught at Livingstone Academy in Nepal, and remembered what the teachers and caregivers there told me: “Tell the children about your dreams. Tell them you want to be a doctor. They need to know they can dream that too.” I believe it was not because the children did not dream the same bigness of dreams, but because with the political suffocation, the backwardedness of the place and the lack of national role models, the adults they become may have the child within them lost forever.

At the school and orphanage, I taught them Art and Craft mainly, based on Biblical stories. I taught them how to make paper plate lions from the story of Daniel and the Den of Lions, paper origami cups from the story of The Last Supper, angels, doves out of the story of Noah’s Ark, spiral snakes from the garden of Eden, paper fish from the story of Jesus feeding the five thousand, butterflies, flowers and other little knick-knacks which I could relate to the Bible.

Class 5 waving their paper plate lions from the story of Daniel and the Den of Lions

Class 3′s paper origami cups from the story of The Last Supper on their class board

Teaching Class 6 how to make angels

Angels watching over the children at Sophia’s Home

Little boy from Class 1 with his paper dove- It’s flying!

Jesus feeding the five thousand from five barley loaves and two fish-That’s my fish!

I don’t know the impact I had on the children, really. How much of my dreams were rub off onto them, and much of it mattered? I was a foreigner to them but did they see that, or like their dreams, was I colourless, nationless and free? Was Madonna European, Clinton American, and Mother Theresa a foriegner to them as they were to me? Did they see that and would they grow to see that, or did my influence come at a congruous time in their colourblinded phase of life? Questions.

That is why I have never longed for a true sense of nationality. I am an emotionally illegitimate citizen of the world. I was born in Malaysia and abhor the fact that I would never have had a chance to become a doctor under the bumiputra system, and I have lived in Singapore all my life but refuse to succumb to or acknowledge my mediocrity with its own. There is a crazy insomniac child living in a frenzy within me, battering itself against my lungs, suffocating in its own darkness. She has no colour, race or nationality. She is God’s child, praying for the future of these third world children and dying to get out herself.

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