follow your dreams
People say everyone can dream. I don’t think that’s true.
Growing up in my country, I liked art. I liked drawing. I liked making things that didn’t really have a purpose other than existing. It felt natural to me. But it was never something people took seriously.
Art was fine—as long as it stayed small.
What I heard instead was to be smart. Take nursing. Engineering. Something practical. Something that could take you abroad.
It usually wasn’t said in a cruel way. Most of the time, it came from fear. Dreams don’t pay bills. Passion doesn’t support families. Art doesn’t get you a visa.
No one told me not to dream. It just never felt like an option.
At some point, you realise that your life isn’t only about you. You’re told to do your best so you can help your parents later. So you can pay for your siblings’ education. So you can support family once you’re earning “real money” abroad.
Leaving doesn’t make that expectation go away. If anything, it gets heavier.
If you send money, you’re doing what you’re supposed to do. If you don’t, people ask why.
And if you choose your own life instead—your own plans, your own dreams—you are selfish. Ungrateful. Sometimes it’s said outright: What was the point of giving birth to you, then?
That sentence doesn’t really leave you.
For a long time, I kept asking myself the same things. Was I born for this? Was my purpose to become a provider before I even knew who I was?
Then another question followed, one I couldn’t ignore. If I accept this, will my children inherit it too? Will they also be born already owing something?
That was when leaving stopped feeling like a choice.
I didn’t leave just for better opportunities. I left because I wanted to break the chain. I wanted a life where children are not born as future solutions to financial problems. Where love doesn’t come with an invoice attached.
Dreaming takes space. And space costs money.
To dream, you need room to try things and get them wrong. To fail without dragging your entire family down with you. You don’t really get to fail on your own.
So people become practical. Not because they lack imagination, but because imagination is risky.
That’s why so many dreams are redirected. Into “in-demand” degrees. Into overseas work. Into remittances. Fulfillment comes later, if at all. Survival comes first.
We talk a lot about resilience. We praise it like a virtue. But sometimes resilience is just what happens when people are never given another option.
People still dream, of course. Quietly. Late at night. Between responsibilities. I did too.
But dreaming shouldn’t feel like an act of rebellion. And it shouldn’t be something only the rich can afford.
Until that changes, telling people to “follow your dreams” has always sounded a bit empty to me.