TO BE NINETEEN

Nineteen is an interesting age to be. You’re young enough to get away with dumb decisions because you’re a teenager and old enough not to have to worry about getting frozen at club entrances by scary-looking bouncers. But you’re months away from losing that all-forgiving ‘teen’ tag altogether. You start feeling obligated to do something with your life other than spending your days in college waiting on that M-Pesa text from your parents like your life depended on it. It’s not the most fun of realizations when it hits you that your YOLO days are nearing their end, trust me. Not to mean that you can’t have fun once you’re older, but you realize that you don’t know yourself as well as you’d want to.

As a disclaimer, I’m about to start waxing philosophical, which isn’t something I do very well. I’ll just allow this stream of consciousness to take over. I’ve always felt like society created a path for us that we’re expected to follow, problem being some of us like wandering off. Go to school, get a job, climb the corporate ladder, everyone’s happy. But when I really think about it, I really don’t want to live my life like that, at least not entirely. I see a lot of older people who would fit right in on the set of ‘The Walking Dead’ because of how zombie-like they seem. There are few things out there that scare me as much as the thought of getting caught up in a daily routine I’m not a big fan of. Maybe I’m just young and naive and don’t know a thing about the ‘real world’ as people like to put it. But the point is that I wouldn’t want to live my life like it came with a ‘How To’ Manual.

I don’t want to be the guy behind a desk who’s always mad at everyone and spends her day counting the minutes to 5 O’clock so she can go home. I don’t want to spend my days fake smiling at my boss so I can be in his good graces when I need a salary advance. I don’t want to be the big time executive who always seems too busy for his family. Don’t get it twisted, I’m not saying that we should all become neo-African hippies and act like we don’t have mouths to feed and bills to pay. It’s more about not wanting to get caught up in something that makes me hate my life. I want to live my life doing stuff I like, stuff that gives me the entire fulfillment I need in the world. But the way the world is set up nowadays, being happy comes second to practically everything else. I’m scared of losing my dreams to reality, if that makes sense.

Whatever it is that as a kid I always pictured myself doing once I was all grown up shouldn’t be too far off from what I actually do with my life. Because if I do eventually get caught up in that tricky maze of mortgages, family, angry bosses, diapers, deadlines, business meetings and pension schemes, I want to have fun trying to figure it all out.