Hey, lovelies.
I've been trying to figure out this life thing and I still do not have any solutions to living, just clues. By the way these clues are just as cryptic as life itself, so here's to attempting how to break adult puzzles and living life on the edge and pursuing things that really matter.
From falling off an orange tree swing in the dark to missing two weeks of school having a nasty cut whose badge I still carry on my left foot today. From sitting an almost perfect one-eighty degrees which in some private school would have meant I could join the cheerleading squad and learn to tie a perfect ponytail( Lord knows I need to learn this), to joining the drum majorettes at nine, I was pretty much a very flexible kid. And so was any other kid in primary school.
But physical flexibility was not the only kind of flexible which ruled our young lives. Our flexibility was proven by our life choices, from liking pink to adoring blue, loving dogs to licking cats, graduating from swings to bikes, we even changed best friends on a weekly basis. That is how flexible childhood was, nothing was ever constant. Life was never punctuated by patience or endurance. We never had to sit down and think things out. The beauty of life was highlighted by impulsiveness of childhood, by the innocence of choosing not to know and by refusal to acknowledge that there were consequences for every little decision we made, innocently or calculatingly. Result: we were blind and happy and were immune to life’s strong blows.
Unfortunately one cannot relive their childhood, even Biblical Nicodemus understood that one can never be born again, which kind of sucks. But one good thing about knowing what childhood felt like is knowing exactly how you navigated it and made it out a happy child so why not use the same principles to be the happy adult you wish you could be? Ever heard of he is sixty-four but with the soul of a sixteen year old or its only plenty years but a younger soul? If you did, congratulations, you just deciphered this whole article. I do not really care about anything else, only that as the bones grow weary and the wrinkles set in, may the spirit grow even younger.
A look back at years after childhood, I honestly tried my best to be the adult I was supposed to be. I had to, my teens were filled with lots of responsibility, more than those of my peers that is. I usually am the last person to complain of life’s blows but the teens were just a phase I would not want to revisit and now that I am a bit older and a little bit wiser I came up with the conclusion that while things were not really as bad as I imagined them to be, the fact that I had to be an adult and think like an adult and let me tell you what, even things that were not in the least bit difficult were like gigantic monsters and I was constantly plagued with thoughts of failure, with fear, death. It was so bad at some point I even attempted suicide which I was not prepared to do and it went awfully wrong and would make a good book someday. All because I decided to adult my way through life.
Just do the adulting thing without actually being an adult!
Back to flexibility which is quite a prominent feature in childhood. It would take you far even in the adulting game but with a little bit of adult adjustments. Ladies and gentlemen, I am talking of mental flexibility. Of course I am aware of the beauty of fixed life choices, well thought future plans, rigid life maps. I get it, it gives a picture of a well organised adult who plans their life in advance and goes about in life following their adult-made path and ticking off boxes and nothing looks more like winning as this does. But a fixed life does not seem like too much fun for me because I know very well it is not. While back in primary school I would write a different profession every time we wrote the famous What I Want to do When I Grow Up, ranging from being a teacher or nurse then graduating to wanting to be an architect after reading Growth and wanting to be an air hostess after watching that Indian movie with the heroic flight attendant who saved people amidst a hijacking. But something changed, which everyone would say is merely growing up. I grew up to want to be a doctor and I am pretty sure that is the path my parents really wanted me to take because they really did a great job hammering it into my mind that I should never drop Chemistry and pay a little bit more attention to my Physics teacher and my mom personally gave me extra Biology lessons. Even back in childhood, my mom really bought me a medical kit complete with a stethoscope and scrubs and she would play patient while in my Red Cross apron and gloves I would be the doctor which I did not really mind as a child. Then adulting came along and doctoring was supposed to be my fixed path, with my teachers even helping make that a reality. I could not bear it but I thought it was my destiny so I followed the path.
But what is related to mental flexibility is divergence. You can agree with me that diverting a child’s attention is the easiest thing to do. Even in the middle of something serious, it takes a very trivial thing to turn their whole focus away which kind of explains why pregnant women act in some certain universal, uniform way. Like a kid going through an adulting phase, my path to being a doctor was diverted which is one good thing about reading and crushing. So I read about this guy Admire in a newspaper about some STEM stuff and that meant he was quite a smart student with the obvious sad story. Today I would also mean it with my heart when I say DO NOT FALL FOR A MAN IN DISTRESS like they say do not fall for a damsel in distress, it almost made me an accountant. What began as a joke turned into a whole big thing which made me take accounts seriously and attend after school Business Studies lessons. The Admire story is a crazy one, I mentioned a newspaper right and in that newspaper like God’s blessings was Admire’s contacts obviously for well-wishers who wanted to help. And because he was cute, looked like he had a nice diluted English accent and had brains which back then before going to law school I thought was quite rare, fifteen year old me went crazy, really crazy I wrote Shades of Love a novella based on fantasies of me and Admire which is embarrassing because I did not even know him. My friends and I after reading that newspaper took his number and truth is it was kind of a funny thing to do, we wanted to see who would text him first which was very unfair given that they knew very well they were dealing with a very impulsive person so all the odds were stacked against me and two weeks later, I did the very thing I was not supposed to. I texted Admire, OMG!!! I literally went like I read about you Admire, are you okay? In my defence and in all fairness I was really concerned it was not a mere pick-up line just that there was some complimentary infatuation. I do not want to believe I really did that but then this is me we are talking about, I am known to dive into things without giving it second thoughts. To cut the story short, Admire was really nice and soon we were vibing and I discovered Chartered Accounting because the one man I was crushing on was doing it so well, representing it well and living his best life and so I was swayed and I started planning my life based on accounting. I wanted it so bad all I would read of was ACCA and search accounting firms and look up salaries, I even started getting along with my accounts teacher whom I thought was boring at first. That was the first diversion, but like all diversions, it was also short-lived. I really hate figures, I am not even good at them but I had thought I wanted it so bad I could not see myself doing anything else.
Then along came another diversion, a real one this time which was not influenced by things as trivial as men. My aunt borrowed me a Stanley Pottinger book she was reading, The Fourth Procedure which marked my inauguration into the most amazing community I know, the world of law. It was like clicking souls, you know like that Biology principle, the lock and key hypotheses. Victoria was one boss babe, fighting for causes she believed in, doing to judges what they did not see coming. I could almost imagine her coming alive from the pages and all I saw was me, fighting for women, holding leaders accountable, standing for what is right, championing for human rights, I was awed. I wanted to be Victoria, I saw myself in a new light, a light that was Victoria and I accepted that this was what I really wanted and like Victoria I had to fight for it. My parents were worried when I enrolled for Arts because they thought I was narrowly confining myself to law and did not have favourable second options like I would have had if I did sciences. My teachers also made a big deal out of it, but I was a kid who had found a purpose, I could not be swayed. It did not help that Victoria’s fictional husband was one hot congressman and petty me thought she got him only because she was a lawyer. What that says about me I do not know, I know I still crush on men in suits, a Paco Rabanne scent and with brains and are drawn towards the dirty world of power. Do not judge me!
Later on I would read the Pelican Brief and I was convinced law school would be the most amazing thing. Now that my life is steered towards being a Victoria, I am grateful of the mental flexibility that allowed me to not stick to already set straight lanes. The moment I chose to live my life like a kid, taking on big decisions without second thoughts, I knew had found wings that finally fit me perfectly. Through impulsively taking on what I would normally not have if I thought hard about it, I would not have known some of the most amazing people I know, would not have learnt stuff I know now, would not have known of new worlds, I would not even have discovered things I love doing now like writing. Rebelling against the order of societal norms, of expectations and beliefs is not only brave, it is a beautiful continuation of the creation and discovery process and every day as we shed our old selves and discard old mind-sets we create new bigger and better worlds we would not have known if we accepted things as they were and did not embrace the idea of change, if we did not choose to take different paths. Allowing one to lose a rigid, fixed mind helps widen opportunities and diversify explorations and accounts for happy souls.
We might have a single life, but nothing can stop us from living multiple times.
So like a child, make that impulsive decision, take that different route, do not overthink your choices, forget consequences, be reckless as you are flexible, be careless as you live, welcome the scars of consequence, embrace the moment, and watch yourself conquer your fears and ultimately, the world.
Till next time
Mitchel.
