Life’s Reality Versus Childhood Fantasy

Growing up, no doubt we had a view of how we wanted our lives to run. Some of us wanted to be doctors, lawyers, accountants, pilots and a few other popular professions. I’m sure none, or very few of us growing up wanted to be fashion designers, barbers, story tellers and the likes. We all wanted the life we saw modelled before us- the doctors, accountants, lawyers etc. But then, in a world like this where almost nothing is certain, we have watched things change before our very eyes. The very careers people frowned at and saw as ‘illiterate’ jobs are now the very ones we all- educated and otherwise run towards. 

Quite funny I never really could remember any aspiration of mine as a child, but then because children back then were expected to write essays, asides telling inquisitive elderly people what they’d liked to be as an adult, I would have most likely said ‘a doctor’, given that my mum was at the time a practicing medical doctor. But then, perhaps my adult-life dream started as a teenager following a particular encounter. The encounter coincided with the time I discovered my writing dream, hence the very big and weighty future I painted for myself with really close dates attached to them.

Am I any of those dreams now? Maybe a little, say 1%, but then one thing adulthood has taught me is to take life one day at a time. It has taught me to have my dreams, have my goals, but never allow any of them to create unhealthy pressure points for me, nor deter me from the true life I could have lived if I allow myself to be flexible, the initial dreams notwithstanding. Knowing this is sure a true antidote for depression (especially such caused by comparison- both comparison of our ‘on paper’ life to our realities, as well as that of our lives with our friends).

Life I have come to discover has its own beauty which unfolds fully in the process of time, as long as we never allow hard work, diligence, and wisdom to thin out of us. For people who chose professions close to nothing they imagined as a child, adulthood must have taught them flexibility about life, which is really key in living a great life. We are now in the era people look inward to choose what they want to be, rather than outward as the case might be. We now have graduates who left their certificates behind and are now joyfully fashion designers, barbers, chefs, media personnel and the likes.

When it comes to our fantasies, adulthood and life’s realities, I have come to discover more than ever to allow our lives (under the watchful eyes of its Maker- God), to run its course. Clutching to our dreams just as we had it while we were young could be the beginning of our downfall in life (depending on what that dream is and the motivating factor).

Like I said in a radio interview I went for some few weeks back – let the rivers of your life flow unhindered. Do not try to tailor-fit your life into your own mold; instead, let go and watch God bring to life His plan for your life, in cooperation with your hard work, persistence, flexibility, courage and gleaned wisdom over time.

Life as an adult could be so uncertain and in some instances hard compared to our imagination of it as kids, but with absolute surrender to the will of God per time, patience and thirst to acquire and use needed wisdom, our lives would no doubt unfold beautifully, even more than we could have ever imagined. 

Photo Credit: Google Photos

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