Written by: Katyayani Mishra
We all dream of something while growing up. What we would want to become, what we would want to adopt as our values. The childlike innocence soon is gone as life progresses. We are left wanting to feel like we are too serious and like we are adults with responsibilities, rather than cherishing the years when we were bright and hopeful. While growing up, I always heard what I couldn’t become. I couldn’t become a writer because it doesn’t give money, and I couldn’t become anything else that they had planned for me. They wanted me to become like the people that they met and were friends with. I never wanted to be what they expected out of me. I never want to live under their expectations and control. And, before I realised, I forgot what I wanted to become. I forgot my dreams and aspirations. I gave up on hope. That maybe someday, in some way, I’ll be able to live my life.
I grew up watching the kind of people that I never wanted to become or ever resemble.
I grew up wanting to escape the glitz and glamour of the city, instead opting to live peacefully in the country.
I didn’t want to be somebody I’m not ever.
But who said that finding yourself is also not equally difficult, as blending in always feels easier?
I never wanted to fall prey to shallowness, hollowness, feeling that I’m nothing.
I never wanted to repeat the mistakes that I saw being made, being so caught up in frustrations that I’d never live.
I didn’t want to become my worst nightmare, someone who knows how to just be confined with something that doesn’t speak to my soul.
Listening to your heart can feel overrated, but I never wanted to be a fool, either, by listening to the voices in my head, because the mind is too rational and the heart is too reckless.
I’d rather make mistakes and fall a million times than be a wise man walking around but without any dream.
At least that way I’ll live vicariously through all poets and writers of the past centuries.
Conclusion
The real journey was never about choosing the mind or the heart, the city or the country, conformity or rebellion; it was about choosing myself. The self I’ve been sculpting through every escape, every refusal, every quiet defiance. And if the world calls it foolish to chase dreams that bruise you, or naïve to believe you’re meant for more than the patterns you were born into, then so be it. I’d rather walk through life a little uncertain, a little undone, yet wholly alive, than stay untouched by risk and unmoved by wonder. Because somewhere between the chaos of becoming and the calm of knowing, I will find the version of me that feels like home. And that, more than anything, is worth every fall.
