“Dream as if you’ll live forever, live as if you’ll die today.”  James Dean

I have been watching Caribbean life, a show on HGTV of people in America, choosing to relocate to various islands in the Caribbean. Oh, how that resonates with my soul. I first visited the Caribbean when at University in the USA. My first Island was the Cayman Islands. My love affair with the Caribbean, began when I was little. We had an old Grundig record/radio player at home. My mum would play Soca/Calypso LP’s. I liked the sound of the people, the carefree living described in the songs. 

When I visited, it was like I was stepping into paradise. I later visited the Bahama’s and other Caribbean Islands on a Royal Caribbean cruise. Eventually got married and lived in Antigua, from where I visited other Islands like Barbados’ St. Kitts and Nevis and Dominica. I lived in Antigua for 5 years before returning to Kenya. I have never gotten the Caribbean out of my system. It is in my blood and I yearn for a time I can go back and live there again. 

This yearning lies deep in the recesses of my soul. In this last year, I have a desire to leave Kenya and go somewhere else. Somewhere where I can re-invent myself. Where I can live on my terms and not have to live by the dictates of others. I envision a time when I can wake up when I choose. When I can earn a living, completely location independent. Working when I feel most productive and not when someone says I should be working. My Angel says I should open a little café wherever I end up living. Pastries and baking are one of my passions. That’s not a bad option, I could run an all pastry baking cafe, and also have my time to myself, to live my best life.

All my dreams sound good, feel good, resonate with my soul. Upon reflection, I realize a few things. Currently, I have two homes, one in Nairobi the capital and one in Mombasa at the coast. In Mombasa, my home is the second row from the beach and ocean. It takes me 3 minutes’ to walk to this lovely beach. My job is one of those I can do remotely and lately, I have been doing it from the confines of my home. This is because of the current lockdown due to COVID. I do mostly logistics and management of resources and people. So in many ways, I am living in a tropical paradise and am pretty much location independent as we speak. I am living my dream.

Lessons to take from this? Well, look around at your current situation, recognize and be grateful for what you have already. Be careful not to look so much into the future that you forget to breathe and live now. Everything looks rosy in the future. Because we dream, and we can manipulate our dreams to look how we want, it is easy to focus on that and not appreciate attention to how you are living now. The present can bog you down and seem heavy, uneventful and not at all exciting. It is easy for us to envision fantasies in the future. The future has not yet come to pass. As the saying goes “the grass is always greener on the other side” in this case this side being the present and the other being the future.

We can paint pictures of what the future will look like. We can envision the location we want which is typically different from our current one. Our limited knowledge of where we want to be allows us to paint glamorous existence to the one we are currently living. In this we have not taken day to day living and the typical struggles found in any location, into consideration.

In retrospect, what I envisioned a while back, months ago, years ago and I look critically at the life am currently living, has come to pas. I wanted it then,worked hard to make it happen and am living that ideal I had in the past. I now want different and feel disatisfied. It is too easy to take life for granted and not stop to appreciate all that is here now. Living in the future is easy, because we can envision living our dreams.

Dreams are not bad, in fact they are necessary, they give us the incentive to strive forward. However, it is just as important to stop and be thankful for what we have. We should stop and recognize that what we are living now was a dream in the past that has come to be our reality. The present is here now, we should appreciate the hardwork it took to get us hear. Pat yourself on the back, you are here in your future, which is now your present. If it is not exactly what we envisioned,then we should work to adjust it accordingly. We should be grateful for it and use it as a springboard to our next set of dreams and aspirations. Remembering always that our situations, could be far worse.

We should be grateful for each and everything around us, good or bad. Grateful because it is either what gives us joy now or teaches us lessons that will be very useful for us tomorrow. Dreaming is good as it allows us to chart our paths for our visions, but we should be careful not to get so caught up in our dreams that we forget to live now.