As children we learn the world is a beautiful wonderful place and that anything's possible - Fairytales and lies get propped up on pedastals and we fall for it hook line and sinker. Fairplay to parents the intent is not in any way malicious, quite to the contrary - these tales are told to inspire and instill a sense of wanting more out of life. We created our own realities, anything was possible.
Sadly what they neglected to mention was.....Success requires sacrifice, being the best is hard, your dream is attainable but my dear child, the road there will not be easy and only the few that push through will eventually achieve what they set out to achieve. As an adult I have found that most people give up far too quickly on their childhood ambitions, hell even on their teenage ambitions. I completely get it that being Fire Fighter at 18 is no longer as appealing as it was when you were 8 but surely the dreams you have in your late teens and through your twenties are what you truly want? If that is indeed accurate it is damn depressing to see how few people actually pursue these ambitions in real life. Hell even if not possible as a main income stream why not try get things going on the side???? I just don't get how people are able to completely shut off their "inner voice" so easily, so many of us fall into the mundaine, the mediocre, the not quite happy but it's ok, the upper-middle class ceilling of it all and are perfectliy fine with malingering there till their last breath - the same can not be said for myself. I remain the "dreamer" a title I am happy to own in my close group of friends, in fact I normally tell them if I ever stop chasing what I want, take me out back and pull the trigger. It's turning out to sound really naive but, growing up I actually thought that everyone grows up wanting to live a life worth living, leave a legacy, you know....Whoops guess not!
I often wonder where it all went wrong, I didn't grow up wealthy and there were a few stage where my mother would sacrifice having meat so that me and my brothers could have meat so it wasn't always sunshine and roses, but I honestly can't complain, I feel like I had a great childhood, outdoor adventures, rocks were my toys, oh my hat and trees my fortresses - yes when they were finally released we were a family of gamers, I remember the first PC we ever got, with it's green and black screen and 1 game- for the life of me I can't remember the name but you know it well. You are a little guy and every stage you find to find keys, and no kids this is pre-lemmings so there was no colour or graphics to speak of. Then came the 8 bit games, good ol Islander, Tetris, Mario Bro's, Circus, Duck Hunt and Olympic, we eventually upgraded to SAGA and the age of Mortal Combat began, I remember waking up once to go to the loo must've been about 8 and there was my dad at 2:00AM jamming Mortal Combat - His favourite charachter was always Sub Zero - madness. In a way I'm thankful tech wasn't as big a part of daily life as it is now. Friednships were organic and real, you met the neighbourhood kids for game of Cricket or Tennis, or tok-tokkie! We went biking up the mountains and exploring, played Kleilat and got up to no good.
I guess I was fortunate to grow up in a household where we didn't really experience any outward racism, not that some of my extended family don't tow the line, but we were fortunate that colour was not made an issue ever. So that I guess was a positive, my parents made us ensure that we got good grades and kept our options open but never pushed us like some crazy parents do, our choices were pretty much ours. Not that I ever chose the highway - off the beaten path for me all the way, I've been bumped, bruised and broken. I've worked in various industries and have met loads of amazing people, but the sad common denominator has always been that only the precious few were and are actually doing what they love, don't get me wrong we can't all come from wealth and have our dreams handed to us on a silver platter and sometimes you have to do the day job to get to the dream but dammit people life's just too damn short to be unhappy! And not to at the very least attempt to reach your dream.
I always say as long as you know where you want to go, how you get there doesn't matter, just work hard, get back up for the thousandth time and get there!
