When you are four, you are a dreamer. As a child, I was always in the clouds. One day, I was sitting on a rug after a stressful nap in kindergarten. It was the kind of nap where you wake up feeling small and out of place. I looked up at my mother with eyes wide and serious. I asked her to help me write about my rebellion. The tale of my days.
I did not want a narrative about dolls or tea parties. I wanted a story of a magical, fragile, but persistent creature.
In that storyline, I ended up in a city of clouds. A place of white flakes and cloudy pools. Some clouds were huge, while others were small... and yet, all of them were equally magical. Droplets lived in those clouds. You know, droplets are playful and curious creatures. I was like that too... always testing the boundaries of the sky. In that city, I was called ''Raindrop''.
The water pools made me the happiest. I adored the strong wind. Not as a master, but as a guardian who turns water into tangled slides. Oh how I raced down those slides! Nothing made me happier than the excitement, the sensation of pure air. The wind watched over me, smiling, making sure I didn't fall and hurt myself.
One day, the wind blew powerfully. I knew I shouldn't race down the tangled slides. But, because I was a very curious droplet, I rushed down anyway, so fast that the wind carried me away into a cloud that wasn't mine. One that, I must admit, I liked far more than my own.
It was a huge storm cloud, home to a different kind of droplets. Powerful, strong droplets that caused all sorts of wrongdoing I had never even dreamed of. I was amazed by them. I loved how they seemed to own the sky. In that moment, I felt an overwhelming desire to be exactly like them.
''Raindrop, you need to go back to your cloud,'' the wind told me. But I didn't like the word ''need'' at all. ''Who decides what I need? I can do everything the storm droplets do.''
''Don't,'' said the wind. ''Return to your cloud.''
''I don't want to go back. Why should I listen to the wind?''
Enchanted by the storm droplets, at first, I didn't even notice that someone was continuously watching me from the side, smiling at me. It was a tiny droplet that, just like I did, once wanted to be a storm droplet. She approached me and asked if I wanted to be friends. ''Friends,'' I thought, ''well, if we are friends, those powerful storm droplets won't want me either.''
The tiny droplet stayed there. She still wanted to play with me. She still wanted to be my friend. And the storm droplets... I kept chasing them, but I could never catch up. At one point, I became tired. For the first time, I took a better look at the tiny droplet that was still there. She was so beautiful, patient, and she cared about me. ''Actually, I would really love to have a friend just like her,'' I thought.
The little droplet wasn't a storm droplet. But she was so uniquely and genuinely happy. How was that possible?
As a four-year-old, I really didn't have the answer.
Today, almost a full decade later, I find myself sitting on that same worn-out rug, knowing I should have probably bought a new one. The harsh fibers feel different under my hands, more real, but the starting point is exactly the same, just with a small difference that I now pray for a nap in school, which used to bother me so much when I was four.
Outside, the sky is heavy, dingy and grey, and the raindrops streak down my window like silver ink. I am no longer that four-year-old with a storm of dreams, yet I am still lost in thought.
The sound of the rain hitting the glass, a rhythmic tap-tap-tap, brings the memories back. Curiously, I don't think of the heavy storm anymore. The lightning and the noise of the ''popular'' clouds feel very unimportant.
Instead, I think of her smile. When I close my eyes, I can almost see her. That little droplet. Her smile feels like a rainbow after a storm. She isn't loud. She is patient, kind and steady. A calm droplet in the world where everyone is screaming to be noticed. It is still just as vital to me now as it was when I first dreamed it into existence.
At almost fourteen, I can finally understand. Her smile came from knowing, early enough, that her power lay in being exactly what she was... A little droplet. She knew she would never be a storm droplet, not because she lacked strenght, but because her cloud was never meant for the storm.
Now I know it was her smile that taught me the most important lesson of my young years. How to be big without being loud.
I watch a single drop on the glass. It isn't trying to be the Pacific Ocean. It isn't trying to be a hurricane sweeping Dorothy's house to the Land of Oz. It just is. And as it merges with another, it grows, and grows. It becomes light, moving with a grace the storm droplets could never mimic.
I am now a teenage droplet. A droplet that knows she can become big precisely by denying to force herself into a storm cloud that is not hers. I do not need to chase the thunder of people who do not care if I keep up or not.
The real magic is not in the rebelion against the wind, in buying tons of new shoes and making more money. The real magic is in the quiet recognition of your own unique value. It is knowing that you belong exactly where you are, in your own unique cloud, that does not need fake impulse for you to grow.
If you can realize that, if you can look at your own ''little droplet'' self and smile, then you have already won. You have become a happy, big droplet, perfectly clear and remarkably strong.
The magic begins the moment you choose to start each day with a smile, embracing all that you have instead of just endlessly striving for more, just like the little droplet did.