As a child you probably spent a great of time wondering what it would like to be an adult, and thinking about the things you would like to do when you finally got to be in charge of your life. Some of them may have been influenced by things you already liked to do, and others may have been influenced by books, family members, people who influenced you or things you saw. For those with a talent or passion that was encouraged and nurtured, those dreams may well have carried through to adulthood, and perhaps even converted into a career.
For others the dream may have been the driving force through childhood, inspiring you to learn the skills needed to bring the dream to life in adulthood. For some perhaps those dreams were not nurtured or were financially impossible, so they were tucked away. For others perhaps the reality of the dream wasn’t what had been expected, or physical limitations meant the dream couldn’t be realized as fully as had been hoped.
Does that mean that those dreams that haven’t been lived, or that didn’t quite make it to fulfillment are gone forever? Whatever your history, at midlife we all have a chance to review our dreams; the ones we got to live, the ones we followed with limited success and the ones we regret not following, and may wonder if they can be recaptured. Perhaps now is also the time and opportunity to fulfill your dreams?
My take on this is that this time round we have the advantage of being adults, so are not as dependent on others to help us fulfill our dreams. Granted we are not as physically able as we were in our youth, so playing in the world cup or becoming a prima ballerina may no longer be realistic, but it doesn’t mean we can’t learn the skills to perform at our best now. There are teams grouped by age for all kinds of sports, there are dance classes, voice lessons, flying lessons, art classes – and pretty much any other kind of learning opportunity you can think of available for a minutes of searching online.
So, what were your dreams as a child, how many of them have you fulfilled – and how many more are still waiting for you to pick them up again and make them happen?
What I have learned is that midlife is an amazing gift life gives us. It didn’t exist for former generations as a woman’s life expectancy made the usual adult life trajectory look like this: have children-hit menopause-die! Now we are much less likely to die in our 50′s, so we have a period of between 10 and 15 years after our children have become adults when we are healthy, fit, energetic and enthusiastic to use as we wish. This becomes an amazing opportunity to look back over what we’ve done, decide what we want to continue doing and what we need to clear out, and review the aspects of that got lost among our more pressing responsibilities. This is the time to pull out those girlish dreams, dust them off and see if they still fit.