02 Oct 2019

Sometimes I like to imagine that I could go back in time and speak to myself as a child.

I’m not talking about my wiggles-watching, nose-picking five-year-old self whose awareness of the world extended no further than whatever was on the television in front of him at the time.

I’d wanna speak to myself aged somewhere between eight and ten. I’d wanna chat to the version of me who was just becoming properly aware of how huge the world around him is. The version of me with grandiose dreams, far-fetched plans and not even the faintest consideration that they might not work out. The version of me who was certain he would be spending the rest of his life doing what he loved.

It’d be funny to see the stupid things I used to enjoy doing, nostalgic to see the games I used to play, and crazy to think about how carefree life used to be.

But if I could actually speak to my childhood self, I think it would be confronting. For both of us. What would your childhood self say if you told them about your life?

Sure, maybe you don’t want to be an astronaut anymore and you don’t have to force yourself to resurrect that old dream just because your ten-year-old self thought going into space would be cool. Your values, interests, and aspirations change as you get older and that’s something you shouldn’t fight. Ten-year-old you would get over that.

But as much as you grow out of some things you love, there are sometimes things that you simply give up on. If you told your (younger) self that your biggest passion in life was painting, but you ditched Visual Arts in Year 12 because it doesn’t get you a very good ATAR, or you’re now at uni studying finance because there’s good money in it, how would they react?

The thing is, we look at kids playing and laughing and we think that their life is so carefree and fun because they don’t have responsibilities to worry about. But that’s not it at all.

Kids are usually happy because they’re doing what makes them happy.

As we grow older, somewhere along the line we start to sacrifice what makes us happy in order to make other people happy. Or to fit in. Or to pass a test. Or to avoid any struggle or hard work.

If you told ten-year-old you what made you happy, then told them you rarely do that special thing anymore, I don’t think they’d understand.

Are you living a life that your former self would have looked forward to living? Or did things just fall into place this way, and now they are what they are? Did you have a choice?

The thing is, if you’re not proud of where you’re at right now, then you can change it. Even if it’s too late to change your subjects in school, or you’re halfway through your uni degree, it doesn’t matter. Life is too short and too fragile to spend it doing something that you don’t derive happiness from.

Whatever’s holding you back – whether it’s your parents, the fear of admitting your dream to people, or the idea that you need to get the highest ATAR possible, there’s a way around it. Because, even though your childhood selves may not know their multiplication tables, they do know something that may have slipped through your fingers over the years  - that happiness isn’t gonna come through chasing the things that you don’t love.