Teen Life In Words

Passions

"What do you want to be when you grow up?"

A question every child is asked at least a billion times during his/her childhood.

And as the kid blossoms into tweenhood and later adolescence, a lot of things change, but that question never leaves. Everyone is curious to know what your ambitions, your dreams, your goals are. What university do you want to get into? What subjects do you want to study? What career do you want to pursue?

We're all always asked this, aren't we? And sometimes it just gets a bit frustrating to be honest.
And it gets more frustrating when you don't have the answers.

Ever since I was a kid, I've never actually envisioned myself 15-20 years from now and fantasised about what job I would have. My friends around me had their childhood dreams. Doctor, teacher, astronaut, actor, scientist; all the interesting careers that intrigued the minds of children were fantasised about and discussed. But I'd always be the one wearing the blank face during such conversations.

Fast forward a few years, and I'm no different. Whenever nosey relatives and family friends pose in front of me dreadful questions of this sort, my hands sweat as I rack my brain for answers which never come. I just hopelessly glance at my parents who swoop in and save me the awkward conversation by saying random shit and changing the topic.

Today, I sat down and wondered about this.

I know I'm not the only one who has no idea what she wants to do with her life, but why is this so? Why is it that most of us don't know what to make of our lives?

I know it's maybe because we're still immature, and lack the experience and perspective required to make such decisions, but one would expect oneself to have at least a slight notion about what they want to do.

So today I sat down with only my thoughts and Troye Sivan's music for company and thought about this.

I cleared my mind of all other thoughts and thought about what I really wanted to do. How I wanted to earn my bread and butter. What I was really passionate about.

And the answer wasn't hard to find this time.

I want to write.

I know I'm a shitty writer but I don't care.

I want to work on this skill and I'm ready to put in as much effort as it requires and just write.

Because for me, writing is magical. Reading books like Harry Potter always made me lament the fact that there was no magic in real life. And then I started writing and realised that the magic I've been looking for has always been around.

The magic of creation.

The magic of creating new characters and unique personalities and weaving a storyline around them.

The magic of creating a new world.

The magic of channeling my emotions and letting them take the form of words.

The magic of stringing together words to form sentences that turn into paragraphs that fill pages.

The magic of writing.

This is what I want to soak myself with. How I want to spend my life.

But then I wondered if the answer was so easy to find, why did it never strike me before?

And then I sat down again with my thoughts and this time Charlie Puth's songs for company.

I thought about my passion for writing, and soon my mind drifted to the passions of my friends. All of the wand-bearing wizards and witches who are weaving magic with their own passions.

A medical aspirant who wants to help people, a cook who is fascinated by the gastronomical world, an artist who uses the canvas to vent out her emotions, a CA aspirant who is in love with the world of data and numbers, and then I thought of all my other friends who are still figuring out what their magic is about. The ones who are yet to receive their acceptance letters from magic institutes.

All of us are trying to feed a fire inside us, trying to make it grow, trying to help it warm our hearts. This is the fire of passion. The fire that drives us, that gives us purpose.

But just because we're passionate about something doesn't necessarily mean that that is what our career would be. I know I want to write but to just sit at home and write and send manuscripts to publishing houses, hoping to get accepted by one isn't going to pay my bills. And like me, I know there are a lot of you guys who have realised what they're passionate about but have no idea how to translate that into a successful career. Because no matter how much we talk about self-satisfaction and happiness in doing what you love, let's face it, happiness doesn't buy you food and drink.

So does that mean that we give up our dreams? I give up writing because it's not going to get me anywhere career-wise until one of my works gets published and people actually buy it?

Of course not. Just because you can't make a career out of your passion doesn't mean you stop adding fuel to its fire. That should never stop.

It took me a long time to realise this. To realise that I can keep doing what I love without depending on it to pay my rent. And I think that works for everyone.

Either you are fortunate enough to make a career out of your passion, or you have to be strong enough to stick to it like a leech. Either way, you can't ever let the fire of your passion die. Because if that fire dies, a major part of you dies along with it.

There's this beautiful quote that sums up what I'm trying to say:
"You can either work to make your dreams a reality, or work to make somebody else's dreams one."

Our fires of passion drive us on in this life and help us look at every morning with a smile, ready for the adventures the day greets us with. Whether we make a career out of our passion or not isn't important, that's not what matters most. What is the most integral thing in our life is whether we let the fire of passion in us live and grow, or sputter out and die. Whether we feed the hungry beast in us that wants life, or we let it starve and die.

Knowing what you're really passionate about takes time. Some people are fortunate enough to realise it when they're young, for some the bulb lights up when they're 40, or even older. That doesn't matter. It shouldn't ever matter. Not knowing in which direction your boat floats is frustrating, trust me, I know, I've only realised today what my fire is made of. But the time you take to make that peace with your fire shouldn't be long.

Give it a shot, see what your passion is all about, but if you can't see it yet, don't fret about it. Let it take its time. But when you figure it out, hold on to that passion like your life depends on it. Because it does.

Never let it go.

Never let that fire die.

It's who you are.

It's what makes you, you.

******
Longest rant I've ever written, thank you for reading the entire thing. I know it's not really cohesive but this is what was going on in my mind today and I wanted to share it in its truest, rawest form. Hope you enjoyed reading it and could understand the message I was trying to convey :)