The Stranger Who Knew My Dreams

I was sitting on a rickety bench at a bus stop in Accra last month, the evening air thick with dust and the hum of hawkers, when an old man with a weathered face sat down beside me. He didn’t say hello, just looked at me with these deep, knowing eyes and said, “You’re the one who wants to write stories, aren’t you?” My heart skipped. I’d never met him, never mentioned my half-buried dream of being a writer to anyone outside my closest friends. How do you react when a stranger seems to see right through you, straight to the hopes you’ve tucked away?

There’s this unsettling magic in moments like that, a mix of wonder and unease that makes you question what’s real. I laughed, nervous, and asked how he knew. He just shrugged, his smile crinkling like old paper, and said, “Some dreams shine brighter than others.” I couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d plucked a piece of my soul from the air. My friend Kofi, when I told him later, said it reminded him of a palm reader he met in Kumasi, who guessed his fear of failure without a single prompt. “Some people just see you,” he said, half-joking, half-serious.

I keep thinking about my cousin Ama, who’s always chasing her own dreams—starting a small bakery, saving for a shop of her own. She’s got this notebook where she scribbles her plans, her fears, her wildest hopes, like opening a café with live music. “It’s silly,” she’ll say, but her eyes light up when she talks about it. That’s what the stranger saw in me, I think—that spark, the one I’d almost forgotten. I used to write stories as a kid, filling old exercise books with tales of adventure, but life—bills, work, the daily grind—had buried them under “someday.”

But here’s the thing: it’s not just about being seen. It’s about what you do with it. The old man didn’t say much more—just told me to “keep writing, no matter what.” Then he got on his bus and was gone, leaving me with a racing heart and a nagging question: Why do we hide our dreams, even from ourselves? I saw a post on X the other day, someone sharing how a random compliment from a stranger pushed them to start painting again. It’s like the universe sends these messengers sometimes, you know? Little nudges to wake us up.

I wonder about him now, that stranger. Was he just observant, picking up on my notebook-clutching vibe, or was there something more? My neighbor, an old poet with a laugh like gravel, says some people carry a kind of wisdom, like they’ve lived a thousand lives. “They see what you’ve forgotten,” he told me over tea. I’ve started writing again since that day—not much, just a few lines before bed, but it feels like coming home. My stories aren’t perfect, but they’re mine, and that’s enough for now.

So, here I am, thinking about that bus stop, about Ama’s notebook, about the dreams we all carry, sometimes in secret. That stranger didn’t just know my dream—he reminded me it was still there, waiting. I’m left wondering: who’s seen your hidden spark? And what would it take for you to let it shine?