When we are children we seldom think of the future. This innocence leaves us free to enjoy ourselves as few adults can. The day we fret about the future is the day we leave our childhood behind. Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind 

As I continue on this journey called life, I am getting used to being an empty nester. I review my life regularly and I’m grateful that I can look back and remember a lot of my childhood. In addition to looking back, I also look forward with hope and expectation. Asking myself how to reinvent me, to grow and learn, to become. Difficult though it may be, I find the process a great adventure. The next adventure of my life and there have been many!

I love that I am in that position where I can ask myself, what and who I want to be. I am not so arrogant as to think I have reached the pinnacle, far from it. There are times when I am am overwhelmed. When I am thinking about all the things that I have not done and might still want to do. Time moves so quickly, I hope there is enough. When I feel panicked about time, I review all I have accomplished and experienced through the years. This helps me maintain balance. Reminds me that though I still have many things I want to do. I have thus far lived a fulfilling life. A life full of activity and adventure, giving me balance.

What do I want to be when I grow up?

I remember when playing as a child and being really happy. Laughing a lot, playing outdoors, climing trees, sneaking to the river. Living in complete childlike abandon. My playmates and I particularly like climbing fruit trees as they had the added incentive of the fruit that we could eat. There was this particular guava tree when in fruit had the biggest juiciest sweetest guavas. I remember sitting on its smooth branches for hours gorging myself with guava fruit. How simple life was then.

We had such fantastical dreams and imagination. I recall wanting to be a cowboy. Must have read about it somewhere as we did not have television. We believed that to be a cowboy, you had to ride a cow. Once, my playmates convinced me (it did not take much) to jump off of the tree branch I was sitting on, onto a cow grazing below. This would make me a bonafide cowboy! I did jump down onto the cow, it did not go as expected. Well, let’s say I am still alive to tell the tale.

Recently I called a childhood friend of mine Watene, to ask him if he remembers what we used to talk about becoming when we grew up. I have known this guy since I was eight and we spent a lot of time together both at boarding school and at home in the holidays (our parents were friends). He laughed, at my odd question, yet one that he probably had thought of himself. How often do we look at our lives and wonder if we had made one different decision, what our lives would be now? Anyway, he was not much help, or maybe what he said was liberating.

As we spoke through the memories of our times as children, we both discovered that we were way too busy being kids to bother ourselves with what we were going to be when we grew up, which was aeons away. It was hard work just trying to think about what we were going to eat for our next meal. Too much thought into the future would have gotten in the way, the thinking was definitely optional. It would have ruined the ability for us to play, laugh and generally enjoy ourselves and living responsibility-free life, as children often do, or should. 

Lucky children that we were, we bothered with the more important things, like having fun! We enjoyed ourselves no matter what we did or where we were. It did not matter that we were not extraordinarily beautiful or had good figures. We cared nothing for wealth, or that we had not travelled the world. In our minds, we had circumnavigated the entire galaxy several times over.

In retrospect, I realize how wonderful it was to be so carefree. Carefree enough to only worry about enjoying the moment. Now I should use the wisdom gained from experience and an awesome childhood. Make a great effort in living now, loving now, laughing now and not worrying too much about things that are beyond my control. What has been has been, and what will be will be. I don’t have the power to change it.

I do however have the power to choose how to live now. Choose to love with abandon and not care it’s reciprocated. Laugh now until tears stream down my cheeks. Laugh until my belly hurts. Think, feel, do, so that twenty years from now, I can look back and smile from my soul. Smile, knowing that I of lived my life to the fullest.