When I grow up...

When we were younger, cute and innocent; we used to say “when I grow up…” a lot. It seemed like the ultimate destination, a place worth arriving at, in fact the most ideal and optimum state of being… There were so many things that were going to be much better and easier when we grew up… But then one day I woke up, and realised that I was grown up, and I had been growing up… but nothing was simpler or clearer… nothing was necessarily ideal either.

I grew up and the older I got, the more things I wanted; I didn’t just want to be allowed to eat what ever I wanted and to be able to play outside whenever I wanted to – which I can now do – but now I wanted more; see the older you get the more you demand from life – you now want love, a career, a family, work life balance, happiness, financial stability… the list is endless.

You fathomed that being an adult meant that you could get whatever you wanted whenever you wanted it; but then when you’re older you

realise that before you do what you want, often times you have to accept the consequences that accompany it; You are unhappy at your job and want to leave? Well you can, but then if you do you can’t pay the bills and take care of the children – so you stay – suddenly you’re doing what you don’t want to, even though the option to do what you do want is entirely exercisable.

You want a family? Well you can’t just get a family, you need someone to create it with and there isn’t always someone looking at you as the best candidate to be their life partner… you have no control over when someone can see you and therefor choose you to do life with… You want love? magical romance? You realise that it almost always never happens at the first attempt – and you learn in general that people are inconsistent and unreliable – but then you look at yourself and remember that you’re just as vile, that you too are inconsistent, unreliable and selfish at times; so who are you to judge others? Would that not be arrogance, or even hypocrisy?...

You want work life balance and financial stability at the same time? You realise that that actually almost doesn’t really exist; one of them has to be sacrificed… You want the most prosperous career that goes according to your vision? You realise that the doors aren’t always open, and that sometimes you seriously have to just hold on to the little that’s going and not dwell on the more that’s not coming yet… You want to really chase your passion? Be an artist, a speaker, a singer, a writer, a comedian? You realise that passions aren’t always easy to monetise, so if you want to guarantee food on the table, you might need to push those passions into the abyss and rather invest energy into the more ‘traditional’ career paths…

And every time life beats you down, you lose that full portion of hope that you once had as a child… every time your career moves get hindered - you start to doubt that you too can be great, you start to question what ever made you believe that you could… every time you get disappointed in love- you start to doubt something as beautiful as you desire is attainable for you too, and begin to question if it’s even realistic… every time life disappoints you- you lose a little hope in the perfection that you once were sure of as a child.

You grow up, and your needs and wants evolve… they deepen and become even more complex to satisfy. Suddenly you learn that growing up doesn’t bring solutions to your current limitations… but that it births new levels of wants; which have different layers of limitations, and require much deeper tools to be addressed, than a simple, “when I grow up, I can do whatever I want,” because in fact; when you ARE grown up, being able to do whatever you want is your prerogative; but you have no control over everything else around you that doesn’t always work in synergy with your desires.