I can feel myself aging in fast motion. I had my mid-life crisis at age 14, so I expect I will be dead before I'm 30. I am not sure if I ever resolved said crisis. Not that anything actually happened to cause it or anything. But there was this weird sense of being lost and bewildered. It's like I woke up one day and completely forgot how spell to simple words like 'naughty' and 'receive'. Nowadays I have to consciously think of how to spell the 'i' before 'e' except after 'c' words and the exceptions to the rule. It was like I'd forgotten how to add and multiply. And how to function 'normally'. What am I supposed to do in my spare time? I used to read and write and draw and make things, and then suddenly I forgot I'd ever done these things.
Of course, it could have be just a weird teenage-phase-thing that everyone goes through. But no one else has spoken of it to me. So maybe I just freaked out for a while because after 14 years on this planet I still hadn't done anything substantial, nothing to get me closer to my dreams or where I wanted to be.
Looking back at it now, I was so young. Like, SO YOUNG. My second-youngest sibling is 15 now, and I still see them as tiny. Of course, this could be because I remember helping to change their nappies like it was just yesterday. They used to be the cotton-fluffy-towel-like ones, the disposable ones weren't so big back then.
Anyway, over the last few years, I have realised that time doesn't exist to be used to freak out about how little time there is. That is, worrying about the shortness of life is just another way of wasting time and leaving you with even more stress and even less achievement.
But still. Doesn't it sometimes just hit you, that you only breathe for so long? People younger than me have achieved more, because they are go-getters and proactive. People older than me have achieved less, because they are passive and put things off and make excuses.
All in all, despite knowing that my little over two decades of life on Earth has flown by, and the next two decades will fly by even quicker (should I survive that long), life is still pretty good. It helps to have a brief plan of what you'd like to achieve each day. Each set back has a role to play in your development and your path. An ayat of the Qur'an that I keep seeing everywhere, which loosely translates as 'Allah (swt) does not give you a burden you aren't able to bear', has hit home and reminds me of why I wake up happy each day. And if the day is terrible, at least night will come and it will be over.
Peace and love,
S.
