The past week was a big one for me. I had the pleasure of welcoming my nibling into the world, so you may now refer to me as Aunty Chioma. My mother also arrived just in time to receive her first grandchild so it has been a very emotional but good week.
Catching up with my mum has been a blessing. Such a blessing that I didn’t argue when she segued into the “when will you marry conversation”, barely 24hrs after her arrival.
Speaking of my mother, I recently remembered the time she asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I must have been around 8 years old at the time.
I didn’t have to think, I already knew. I wanted to be a salon girl.
Yes, salon girl, because we didn’t really call them hairdressers when I was a child.
Why salon girl, you ask. Well, there was a salon across the road from our house. The owner was friends with my mum but she was hardly around. She wasn’t the one I wanted to be though. It was her shop girls that I aspired to be. Aunty Rose and Aunty Tawa. They spent all day gisting and making women beautiful, and to my young mind, what was not to love.
Of course my mother did not find this the least bit funny, but looking back now, I realise it is kind of odd, if not silly, to expect children who have not experienced life to decide what they would like to spend the rest of their (hopefully) long lives doing.
The question of what I wanted to be when I grew up, came up again when it was time to take the final exams for secondary school. My best subjects at the time were Igbo language, Agricultural science and maybe Biology. I had a keen interest in agricultural science, still do. But the sprinkle of derision in my fathers voice when he said things like “so you want to be an Igbo farmer” steered me towards a more “reasonable” direction.
In the time it took me to study medicine, many of my friends graduated from university/ gained employment/ started families and in some ways, I felt like there was a cloud of FOMO hovering over my life. I felt like studying medicine had taken so much time and somewhat stifled whatever latent creativity I had and wasn’t exactly turning out to be satisfying or enjoyable.
I was jealous of other people who seemed to have found their passion and were following it.
I wanted to discover my own passion too. That thing they say, that when you find it, you never feel like you’re working another day of your life, or whatever.
Passion appears to be a common denominator amongst highly successful people and rightly so. We are more likely to show up for the things we are passionate about, even when it is not convenient, and for this reason we are more likely to succeed at such things.
The story that isn’t always told, is the one about how passion is arrived at.
Many of us imagine that certain people are born with their passions which they then go on to pursue throughout the course of their lives. What I am finding, from my own personal experience, is that things doesn’t generally work that way.
I was listening to an episode of Brene Brown’s podcast where she had Dr Angela Duckworth, author of Grit and the two women talked about the circuitous routes that landed them in their current careers. They talked about higher education, working different jobs while juggling family and motherhood and everything in between and it was an enriching conversation.
One thing that stood out for me in the conversation was how both women started their careers doing work that is very different from the work they have now become well known for. Dr Duckworth for example, went from being a math and science teacher, to a psychology professor and is now an Author and CEO of a non-profit organisation.
In her bestselling book Grit, she talks about trying out a wide variety of activities, in order to discover which ones you might be interested in enough to explore further. This is a process that can take time, years of time spent living and experiencing life.
Therefore it shouldn’t come as a surprise that many of us haven’t found our thing at whatever arbitrary age we’ve set for ourselves. Trying requires time, and effort. Trying also goes hand in hand with error a.k.a mistakes a.k.a failure. Therefore failing is part of the process, and not a reason to beat yourself up.
Chances are, if you carried out an objective analysis of your personal progress through life, taking into account your own peculiar circumstances, and not measuring yourself against anyone else, you might find that you’re doing okay at least, or remarkably well at best. And maybe, just maybe, if you choose to ignore what everyone else is doing and focus on your strengths while building and maintaining good habits, you might find yourself igniting passions you never knew existed and achieving far more than you ever thought possible.
I remember crying so hard I couldn’t verbally respond to my mother when she walked into my room to wish me Happy Birthday on my 28th birthday. When I looked around me, I felt like my life didn’t measure up. I felt like I was way behind and still hadn’t found my thing and I wasn’t fulfilling whatever purpose it is my life was supposed to be serving.
It has taken a lot of conscious psychological work to reframe my thinking and rewire my brain, but as I turn 35 in a few days (31st of August, I’m accepting gifts) I know now that I am where I am supposed to be, and my thing may not look exactly like I’d hoped and also it’s okay not to have a thing.
We can’t all be social justice warriors or fitness enthusiasts or entrepreneurs or innovators. As much as the world needs passionate people, it also needs good, not-so-passionate people. People who work unexciting jobs and make the effort to show up for their loved ones in kind and thoughtful ways and fill their lives with things that make them happy and serve their personal goals.
This week I am reading
Grit: Why passion and resilience are the secrets to success - This has been an interesting read. I love me some good real life science/research.
It’s my birthday in 8 days and I am yet to order my cake or finalize my birthday wishlist. That’s how busy my life is at the minute. Thankfully I arranged to have the weekend off even before I resumed work because important things are important. Accepting gifts in advance so feel free to check out my wishlist.
Here’s wishing you a purposeful week.
Chioma.