Dear G:

When a young child is asked: what do you want to be when you grow up? (a common question asked when I was a child), the child often answers: an astronaunt, or a hero, or a movie star or.. something big, something brilliant, something famous and flashy.

We all start life with big dreams, thinking everything is possible for us, a wonder-full life.

When a young child presents a drawing she did in kindergarten to her parents, she thinks that her drawing is a wonder-full work of art, the one and only of its kind. She doesn’t yet know every child thinks that about her or his drawing in kindergarten.

Now, let’s take a break from a young child’s world of wonder and fast forward to the adults we see in street corners, the homeless. These homeless adults were these children with a great imagination of how wonderful life will be. They were born with the same intelligence as other children, same hope, same wonder- what happened to them?

Life happened. For many, a severely dysfunctional home they were born into. For many, it was bullying in school, suffering aggression. For some it is a physical disease or accidents that damaged their bodies… life happened.

In your case, you got sick and the distress caused you to not be able to study well and you got poor grades in university. You lost weight and your hair.. you suffered a significant setback in life. But you are still alive, still intelligent, you can still do well in life.

If you walk through a forest, you will see trees growing straight up, tall and straight. But you will see other trees bent over, having suffered an injury, there is a bending. But they still grow, only a bit sideway.

Nature finds a way to keep growing, keep living,  in spite of injuries, taking a round-away direction, according to many creative solutions that are inherent to nature.

G- let go of the old dreams, akin to the dreams of a young child- those dreams almost never come true.

Don’t mourn what could have been for the rest of your life. More than 99% of people don’t get to live the lives they imagined for themselves when young.

Look at your reality as it is now. See reality accurately and plan your life according to logic that is available to us humans and according to creativity that is inherent to nature.  Use these two things and you will make a good life for yourself.

anita