The dream and the plan for it

She wants to teach music in Alexandria. Asked to describe it, she describes a building: a school with her name over the door, on a street near the Corniche, three rooms and a waiting list.

That is one version of the dream, the specific one. The other version sits underneath it and is harder to say out loud. Children in her city growing up with an instrument in their hands, and her earning enough from it to do it again next year.

The second is the dream. The first is a plan for reaching it, and almost certainly not the plan that will work.

This is where the people around her matter, and where most of them get it backwards.

The useful friend pokes at the building. Why three rooms? Why that street? Why not lessons in people's homes first, or a Saturday class in a borrowed hall? This friend is plainly on her side, which is exactly why they can question the plan without making her feel small.

The unhelpful friend pokes at the hope itself. Music does not pay. Parents here only want tutoring for exams. Be sensible. They mean well. They are trying to stop her from falling, and the price is that she never climbs.

And the friend who loves her too much to say anything at all may be the riskiest of the three. With nobody questioning the building, she will come to believe the building is the dream. The first time the rent or the street goes wrong, she will think the whole thing has failed.

Hold the hope close and let people take the plan apart. When nobody around you is willing to criticise anything, the first plan you guessed at becomes the one you are stuck with.