Birthday
If I had had the ability to offer an honest prediction about my future when I was younger, I would have admitted that I didn’t know what life would be like 20 years down the track. Why? Because no one had taught me that you needed an income; no one explained that you needed somewhere to live and no one conveyed the need for family, friends, and maybe a partner in order to survive in society.
Instead, I was brought up to believe that the only important thing in life was getting a degree – everything else would take care of itself. Ironically, the parent who forced this philosophy on me ended up being so threatened that I might become “a better person” than them, that they sabotaged my ability to complete that degree. In the end, not only did I not have the basic skills and resources for living, the one thing that I had been told was the panacea for all life’s needs never came to pass – i.e. I never did get that degree (at least not in the field that I loved – science).
As I had no guidance in what was important in life, I experienced real difficulties in making decisions that helped those things happen. Anything that I did manage to get in place was nothing short of miraculous. Combine this foundation-less start with some serious medical conditions and I entered a state of limbo from age 18 to 33. Its only been through the help of strangers (not family) that I’ve been able to put in place, during the last ten years, what most people (in Western counties) have in place by the time they’re 25.
So today, as I turn 43 and the important things in life are finally part of my day to day experience, I find that I have a vision of a future and enough ability and resources to hopefully make things happen. I also have the love and support of good people and hopefully the ability to still have a family.
Time as always is the great leveler, and I have no idea if I’ll be delegated enough of it to turn thoughts into realities before I suffer a systemic shutdown of my body. I live in hope however, that the metronome forgets about me just long enough, that I might carry out some fancy footwork and leave behind completed legacies not partialities.
More than most however, I know that time doesn’t choose favourites and I don’t expect it to do me any favours. In the end it boils down to just one thing – continuing to express oneself in the world for as long as one can. Everything else is just human philosophy and rhetoric – nothing more.