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If someone asks me what my greatest wish is, I would probably tell them that my greatest wish is to become a good person. But while that is one of my biggest wishes, it's not the biggest.
I have two biggest wishes. One may seem like the staple wish that everyone is allowed to harbor, but, it is not just another teenage dream. It is so much more than that. It has been my dream since the age of five, when I had just gotten to learn that there is a bigger and possibly even better world than the one I live in. That there are many, many, many more people than those that I know. Since then it has been my biggest wish, one that I continue to believe in, one that I hope to fulfill one day.
My biggest dream is to see the world.
Time passed and I grew up, and although my dream is yet to be accomplished, I have seen most of my world. Maybe there is much more, and maybe there is nothing left, but my world has still not been enough for me to let go of the dream of seeing the bigger world.
But growing up means changing. Though a person never truly changes, I think, we do change. And as I grew up, I changed too. I made mistakes and I learnt things, and on the way I developed another biggest wish, and although I have not had the wish since I was five, it still is as important to me as my other dream.
It is to talk to a stranger.
It's funny and it's ridiculous. I'm aware. Talking to a stranger is something we do every other day. My dream should be fulfilled by now then, since I am no Rapunzel whose mother has her locked up in a secret tower in the middle of nowhere. But I don't just want to talk to a stranger; I want to talk. I want to talk to a stranger who is not judgmental and who will listen to me, not because they are forced to, but because they want to. I want a stranger who I am never going to meet again, but they are a stranger that knows all there is to know about me, all in one day. I want a stranger who is interested in the bigger world too, a stranger who can see things and likes to know people and is just like me.
That stranger, they can fulfill my biggest dream. I hope to be able to fulfill theirs too, maybe.
And right now, as he sits in front of me in this windy park on this windy day and asks me that question that I ask myself every time I see someone else, I know that this is that stranger.
I have found the stranger.
"Don't pretend you don't know what I mean. Everyone in this world has their story. Obviously you do too," he says, determined to know.
"It's not interesting, I'm telling you," I say to him, not because I'm stalling the fulfilling of my dream, but because I want to make sure he is interested and I am making no mistake.
"Let's leave that up to me to decide, shall we?" he says and grins at me, and I laugh, unable to help myself. "So. What's your story?"
What's your story? He says that and I know. I am sure. He is the stranger.
I give in. "Okay. So as everyone else in this world does, I have a story too. And although mine isn't interesting, you insist to know and so I'm telling you." I glance at my watch and shake my head; he's late again. I shut the book on my lap and make myself more comfortable, because we are going to be sitting here for a long time.
And then, I begin.
