When asked the question,
‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’
What do you see?
You seek an answer but
archaeologist, artist, writer
no longer arrive as easily as once they did.
You’ve waited so long for the future to arrive.
It’s here. It’s now.
Time to decide.
Fear urges an answer
but you search
in all the wrong places.
You retreat to the safe and the familiar.
Your life catches on the trappings
of responsibility
and lists without an end.
Mind and body pedalling furiously
to arrive at destinations unknown.
Unwanted.
Unfulfilled.
You seek an answer in the enticing glare of a screen,
an endless stream of doom.
A deafening chorus of hatred and false claims
drown out
the dreams, the hopes,
the actions that demand courage,
the voice that whispers,
You’re here.
You’re grown.
Listen to what your soul desires.
In a room.
A large round table.
Adulthood in a scene.
Eyes on you,
a decision to be made,
a voice to be heard.
You gulp.
You’re already grown,
unable to recall how you got here.
Yet here you are
and your yelling fear dwells here too,
drowning out the voice that whispers,
this is not where you belong.
When asked the question,
‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’
What do you see?
Dial down the noise.
Turn off the screen.
The answers don’t dwell there,
as well you know.
You have all you need right here.
Stop. Look. Notice.
Don’t retreat.
You’re here.
You’ve grown.
Now, what do you see?
Joy.
Connection.
Purpose.
This is the path that holds the answers,
its pages waiting to be written
by the pen of your heart and soul.
The way won’t be packaged neatly as once you thought it was.
Writer. Artist. Archaeologist.
These pages hold magical treasures far beyond these roles.
known.
