As this year starts to come to an end. I find myself thinking about what’s next? What do I want for next year? What are my goals? What hobbies have I kept up with? What kinds of things are important to me and what has fallen by the way side?
They’re like snippets of sound in my mind. They patter along making beats as they pass through me echoing in song.
They aren’t intrusive though, more reflective. They make me move forward. Make me wonder about the now and where I find myself presently. But, it seems that it’s becoming more and more clear to me recently that the things we did when we were young, the moments we had where we would say, “I want to be a fireman or a doctor or perhaps an archeologist,” were defining moments. We just didn’t know it.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that what we wanted to be when we were young held momentous sway in how our futures shaped out to be. But I do believe that from defining ourselves on where our interests lay in such an early phase was telling in the things we would come to enjoy later.
Why am I talking about this? I guess because the more I think about it, the more I come to realize that the things we enjoy in our lives, at least for myself, come from the interests I had as a child. The hobbies I enjoy and the things I do were shaped when I was young. I grew up in an environment that encouraged me to explore and read. I have curiosity that bleeds into many different categories and I find my love of technology stems from finding joy in the time I was given wrapped in fond memories of playing ps1 throughout my childhood. I grew to love team activities and sports growing up in a competitive household where there was more than three children.
And I can see now how all these small points of light reflect in my mind as I think back to those days. The links were always there and I’m grateful.
I also find myself pushing forward. I want to define new paths like my childhood did before me for the future me. I get restless and anxious, not perhaps to move or be active, but to enrapture and engage in things I don’t know. I hate being told that we need to define ourselves by a certain age and that past a certain point your time is up. I want to be able to gain new skills and interests as I grow. I want to build upon areas I am not good in and become better in the things I didn’t know before.
So why should you care? Because growth is for everyone, it finds us all. Regardless of whether we actively search it out or if it finds us when we aren’t looking. There is a trend of sentiments that follow along the lines of adapt or die. But I think that growth is adapting whether we choose it or not. And if we can’t change that we grow, we can at least try to channel it actively into something we are interested in.
If you are still reading this and you haven’t clicked off by now can you do this one thing for me?
Find something that interests you and invest more time in it. It can be anything, the idea isn’t to push you to find something you despise, but rather to grow in the things you don’t know but find interesting.
And then when you have put enough time in, share what you know. Smart people make money off of their ideas and I get that, but I think if the world shared their resources more freely and with more enthusiasm perhaps we might gain something from it. Even if those resources are small, only a new hobby here, or changing someone’s mind on something there. in the end growing together and individually in a way that is active and with interest leads to better people and perhaps even a happier state of time.
Milkshake Thoughts 