I’ve been reading the Harry Potter books (in Spanish, for practice) and today I started thinking about how different one important aspect of children’s lives is.
From year to year, basically everything is different.
They go through this yearly cycle where they go back to school, have new teachers, have different kids in their class, focus on learning a specific set of things, and generally have a stable life.
And then the next year, it might all be completely different.
To a child, that’s all they know so they wouldn’t really question it. But to an adult, it’s quite intriguing.
There are, of course, pros and cons.
One pro that I first considered (and which, I suppose, figures prominently in Harry Potter), is that if things are really bad, you just tell yourself that it’s only for this one year, and then it will be over.
It gives you hope to know that a really difficult situation definitely has a shelf life and that no matter how hard it is now, it will be over within a predetermined timeframe.
And that, of course, is rarely how anything works as an adult. Most difficult situations are difficult to forecast. Maybe they get better soon, maybe they don’t.
Perhaps they last forever.
This applies to good things as well. For a child, perhaps part of why they are more inclined to live in the moment and truly enjoy their experiences is because they know they won’t last. But they are still confident that they’ll have plenty of new, great experiences even if the old ones end.
Life as an adult is characterized much more stability. For most people, most years, life doesn’t change much from one year to the next. You hope it will get better, but you still generally have the same job, same friends, same living situation, same hobbies and activities.
Obviously things do change but it’s absolutely nothing like it is for a child.
I think maybe I’m naturally resistant to the stability adulthood brings. I’ve always hated recurring events and obligations and have always been drawn to the unknown and new situations.
It would make sense, then, that much of my adult life (since I’ve reached a level of flexibility that allows me to do what I like, anyway) is characterized by wandering off to other countries and continents alone, to cities I don’t know.
The idea that I’ll keep doing exactly what I’m doing no – no matter what that is – has always been unappealing and even a bit depressing to me.
While I’m very confident that I’m enjoying my adulthood more than I enjoyed childhood (I hated structure and being told what to do, so childhood was not ideal), I felt myself drawn today to the idea that every year would be completely different. It’s exciting to me.
So now I’m wondering if there’s something I can and should do with this idea.
I think I need to be totally open to new experiences and ideas, and explore opportunities as they come along.
An outside observer might say that I am absolutely already doing that, and they wouldn’t be entirely wrong.
But I think I should also be pursuing other professional options and ideas. At one point I scoffed at the idea of “side hustles” and splitting my time between many professional pursuits (in favor of working harder at one thing), I’m thinking now that I really need to be open to pursuing other ideas and things that come up.
I think any sacrosanct ideas or beliefs that I’m holding on to should be open to questioning.
And I think I need to make a strong effort to ensure that each year is quite different than the previous.
Maybe that even means getting really into a new hobby each year, or working really hard at something new.
I’m planning to not really drink at all this year and that will likely help give me the time and energy to put towards new pursuits, and I should definitely take advantage of it.
Here’s to hoping that this year is the most different yet.