Reaching for your dreams

Come the end of your second decade alive, and a whole lot of changes. Typically kids finish school and go to University or get themselves jobs. Some move out, some stay stuck at home. Some get told by their parents that they are finally old enough to find themselves a significant other, some are forced to marry, and some – well, nothing really changes. One thing universal though, is the emergence of the twenty-something-blues.

The most pressing issue is the one about 'your future?’ There is one question that every single person you meet will ask you (no exaggeration): "So what are your future plans?"

Some of us have dreams we've been dreaming since we were five-six year-olds, and if we are fortunate enough, have the opportunity to pursue those dreams. Some of us have been given dreams by other people, and finding them worthy of our sweat, work towards achieving them. Yet another camp has dreams thrust upon them by circumstance. Now who's going to complain if everything works out perfectly right? The rest of us don't know what we're doing or where we're going, and randomly float around in a haze of uncertain future plans which we don't really care much for.

Needless to say, I belong to that last category. I used to belong to the first category, then moved on to the second, subsequently to the third, and now find myself here. Okay, everybody who has been through the same, put yourself in the fifth category which I just created.

Somewhere along the way, during my rendezvous with the first stage of my journey, I applied for an exam which (if I had completed successfully) would have taken me, fully financed, to an alien land with violin-case tucked under my arm.

Somewhere further along the way, between then and now, I forgot about this. So it came as quite a shock when a week and a half ago I received a notice in my email saying I was due to take the said exam the following Tuesday.

I like a challenge, but exams never motivated me to study, so I braced myself and started cramming during the few days I had left before the exam. My days ceased to exist, and life was one blur of books, computers, books, computers, books and computers!

I had ceased to have a dream, but convinced myself to work towards the ancient one, just for the sake of getting through the exam.

On Monday morning I take a break from my vigilant routine of study, study, study, to check my email and also confirm exactly what I need to take to the exam on Tuesday. The email notice I received says I must bring two pencils and a calculator and be at the venue of the exam by 7.45 am, on Saturday morning. I am reading this message at 8.30 am, on Monday morning… two days too late!

I had taught myself to dream my old dream again, and I had convinced myself that I had my future drawn plainly in front of me. Plainly I was wrong.