Lonely Caterpillar
 

When I grow up……

What do you want to be when you grow up?

Probably one of the most frequently asked questions to children between 3 and 18? My husband still regularly says to me he doesn’t know what he wants to be when he grows up…and he’s 32, (I don’t have the heart to burst his bubble).
When I was about 4, I wanted to be a panda, yup a panda. when I eventually realised that I couldn’t turn into an animal I wanted to be anything from a nurse to an actress, eventually around 15 settling on wanting to be a teacher… that didn’t actually happen either.
What we want to be takes up a fair bit of our thoughts at certain ages, currently Megan who is 7 wants to be a singing hairdresser on Britain’s got talent, having realised after a nose bleed that her fear of blood might rule out becoming a vet. Eli who is 5 wants to be ‘a police’ pretty sure he thinks it’ll be a grown up version of catch.

The fact is, who we are, who we want to be and who we choose to be changes all the time, in four years of studying for my degree have changed direction slightly three times! Just this weekend while studying, having spent the past two years convinced criminology is the area I want to focus on, iv realised I am loving clinical psychology and once this degree is finished maybe that’s a direction I will take.. maybe not. As much as I giggle at Ben saying he doesn’t know what he wants to be when he grows up, I think my path very much shows that I don’t have a clue either. I am however very happy to follow where I am called to be, however surprising that sometimes turns out to be.

So today while , on my way to some voluntary work, (which I love and know for certain that’s where I am currently supposed to be) I was following a bomb disposal truck , bomb squad.. not sure what the correct name for them is but you get the idea. It was headed in the same direction I was , flashing lights speeding up the motorway, people ready to put themselves on the line for the sake of others. As they passed me I thought , ‘I bet that’s a job Eli would love’ and then I had a little light bulb moment. Isn’t it a job we should all want? Last week I had an angry week, everything was annoying me, the kids school work, Megan got sick, Eli caught his finger in the door, Ben was stressed at work, I was making rubbish decisions and I had let it all bother me far too much. At one point while out driving with my friend, she had to say ‘let it go’ so many times that I considered phoning Disney to ask if they where missing Elsa!! The thing is those few words and injecting a bit of laughter into the conversation just released all the tension, it defused the situation and injected some perspective.. there was nothing to be angry about! When Ben is busy at work, if he tells me about it and I tell him, ‘you’re right, that’s too much work, you’ll never get that done, you cant do it, yea better just scream panic or give up now’ his stress levels would go through the roof, it would be like lighting a fuse and waiting for an explosion, if I reassure, encourage and comfort him, it takes the worry and the panic out of the situation.

We need to be each others bomb squad, sometimes we cant help ourselves, we don’t have the equipment needed or we are too close to the source to see a way round it or out of it, we need someone to come along and just put themselves on the line, they might be feeling a bit rubbish themselves or even risk making an eejit to make us laugh but it turns things around.

No matter what career I end up in I hope I always have the ability to defuse, rescue and take risks for others.