Find Your Breath of Fresh Air -

When I Grow Up…

Remember when you were a kid? Every day was special—you’d wake up, looking forward to all of the good things that the day was sure to bring. As we got older, that optimism gave birth to passion—the ambitious class president who knew that one day, she would help develop policies that would improve lives, the dedicated bio student that knew he would save lives, and the industrious little one who ran a lemonade stand and knew that someday she would run a company…

Where did those people—the people within many of us—go??

Real-World Demands

Easy—day-to-day demands swallowed them up. We had to get practical—all but a few get faced with student loans, rent and mortgage payments, responsibility for our children’s and our parents’ well-being—long, exhausting days of managing tasks and serving the needs of others. It seems like it won’t end, and if and when it does, we’re too old and tired to pursue our former passions—if, in fact, we can even remember what they were and why we wanted to do them in the first place.

For some of us, being able to focus on day-to-day tasks is/was a relief—it takes up a lot of time and you feel productive when you’re done. For those who didn’t/don’t have a passion, tasking buys you time to figure out what you want to be when you grow up.

Remembering…

Remembering your passion—or even finding one—can be triggered quickly, though. You may see something on TV, hear a song that resonates, or meet someone that makes you feel something you “can’t explain”—you just feel like you have something new to look forward to. The feeling can catch you off guard. I found that out while seeing our own children feel their passion. Watching those feelings unfold in them was like a breath of fresh air for me—it didn’t reignite a love of my prior goals, but it did cause me to pause and to remember that I had once felt a passion about life, too.

By anybody’s standards, I was living a great life. It was, however, one that was very different from the one that I had expected to have when I was a young adult and sometimes, I felt that I had become lost. Then, I watched our kids thrive by each one finding something that they loved and believing that they really would accomplish what they set out to do. I felt their fire as strongly as I had once felt my own.

Alive Again…

Our children set out on their own lives and my life went back to day-to-day responsibilities for a few more years. That breath of fresh air paved the way for feeling a new aliveness, though, as well as for spawning the determination that one day, I would establish goals that once again, ignited passion.

We’re all here for a reason—what is yours? What drove your desires, as a kid, and what inspires you now? Something, somewhere, will likely trigger or reignite your passions, eventually. So, give your goals and desires some thought—write them down and get ready for that breath of fresh air—it could find you when you least expect it.

Until next time,