When I Grow Up

Someone once asked me,

“Who do you want to be when you grow up?”

At that time my head was crowded with answers. I wanted to help those in need, the souls I would see on my way to school while sitting behind the cycle of my brother. They sat quietly on the street, their small bodies still, their eyes lifted as if waiting for kindness to notice them. Even then I felt the weight of that silence. I dreamed of creating something for them, a charity that would soften their days and make life gentler for those with special needs.

There were other dreams too. I wanted to be a pilot, to live in the sky and call the clouds my companions. There was something about the idea of flying that felt infinite, the chance to travel the world and see what lay beyond my little island.

Fast forward to now and life has carried me into another world, one I did not imagine back then. Hospitality became my work, words became my way of breathing, and my dreams of helping still linger, steady and patient. They are not forgotten. They are stitched deep into who I am, waiting for their moment to step forward.

And yet as I have grown, I have learned something that I did not know as a child. Beyond careers, beyond titles, beyond all the possibilities of who I could become, there is something else I now want most.

I want to be happy. Not in passing, not only on special days, but in the everyday rhythm of life. In mornings that arrive soft and unannounced. In the quiet of evenings that ask for nothing but presence. Happiness is no longer the shadow to my ambitions, it has become the light that gives them meaning.

So when I am asked now who I want to be when I grow up, I will still say I want to help, I want to give, I want to create. But above it all, I want to be someone who is happy.