I’m graduated. Now I’m grown up, right? I’m at the point where, this is maybe what I’m supposed to be (do) when I grow up.

The other day my friend pointed something out to me. She told me that our society is always so forcefully oriented in the future, starting just from that simple question when we are little kids. Why do we not value the present? Why can’t we just let them be kids? Why can’t we just let us be twenty-somethings right now? I really admire people who know what they want to do. I guess that I, too, know what I want to do, but I have no idea how to get there. And therein lies the problem. Does it really matter if we know what we want to be when we grow up? What do I want to be? I want to be happy. I want to be happy while doing something significant. I don’t want to be a doctor or be a rockstar or be an accountant or be a sociologist working in relevant development (what I actually want to do). I want to be happy and loved and do that thing, whatever my job may be, because it makes me happy.

They told us when we were little that money doesn’t buy happiness. But then they slip in that we need to know what we want to do with our lives so that we can make the financial means to then….be happy.

 

In reality, I know what I want to do with my life. I want to travel. I want to love. I want to sing. I want to write. I want to take pictures. I want to learn how to knit socks. I want to drink coffee. I want to read books. I want to ask everyone what it is they feel the most strongly about, what they do to feel alive so that I can too. Those are things I want to do. I know what I want to be too. Not when I grow up, but right now. I want to be. I want to be happy, I want to be love. And this isn’t something that’s going to happen when I grow up, because I have no idea when that’s going to be. I was watching the Muppets movie the other night, listening over the soft snores of my three year old niece that was nestled in front of me (who already told me that she is going to be a princess when she grows up), and heard “growing up is becoming who you want to be.” Well, I am going to be, right here, right now. Because this is all I have. This is all any of us have.