STORY 6: Dreams That Learned to Hide
- Afia Pomaa Agyei
- Dec 23, 2025
- 2 min read
STORY 6: Dreams That Learned to Hide
Yaw learned early not to talk about his dreams.
The first time he shared them, he was sixteen, sitting on a wooden bench outside his aunt’s house as the evening breeze carried the smell of charcoal and stew through the compound. He spoke with excitement, hands moving faster than his thoughts.
He wanted to build something. Create something meaningful. Something that would outlive survival.
The laughter that followed wasn’t cruel.
That made it worse.
It was casual. Dismissive. Wrapped in advice.
“Be realistic.” “Focus on something safe.” “People like us don’t do those things.”
Yaw laughed along, embarrassed, pretending it didn’t sting.
But dreams, once mocked, learn to flinch.
From then on, he folded his ambitions inward. He spoke of practical goals. Respectable plans. Things that sounded responsible.
Inside, his real vision grew louder.
At night, when the house slept, Yaw wrote in notebooks no one read. He watched tutorials quietly. Practiced skills in secrecy. He learned not to announce beginnings.
When relatives asked what he was doing, he smiled vaguely.
“Just learning something small.”
Ridicule teaches caution.
But it also teaches discipline.
Yaw built slowly. Patiently. Without applause. Without permission.
There were moments he doubted himself. Nights when the voices returned, wearing familiar faces.
Who do you think you are?
On those nights, he closed his notebook and rested. Not because he quit—but because he respected his dream enough not to exhaust it.
Years later, when the work finally began to speak for itself, people reacted differently.
“You never told us you could do this.”
Yaw smiled.
Some visions are sacred.
Not everyone deserves access to your becoming.
He understood then that dreams do not die from failure.
They die from exposure to the wrong audience.
And so he let his dream live quietly—
until it was strong enough to stand without him defending it.
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