Becoming

We all have our heroes. We grow up with an image of greatness in our minds, someone who has made it. As children we had a lot to be inspired by, every movie, every sports tournament, every character in modern history was a source of unhindered hope and inspiration. We were all black belt ninjas in the days of Bruce Lee and Van Damme. Everyone was a Haile Gebresilasse and Seleshi; a Derartu and Berhane during the Olympics – cork medals were our Olympic gold medal equivalents. (ዋናው ማመን ነው 🙂 We ran our hearts out, imitated crowd roars with our arms stretched out in embrace and experienced near-absolute freedom. 

Boundless imagination and inspiration do not come easy as we grow older. In the process of ‘adulting’, our sources of imagination narrow, and we specialize in interest and orientation. We become more critical of our inspirations. The limited drive we have left, we chop up with doubt and acquired fear. Hundreds of years of post-industrial revolution, social, political, and economic edifice have set out a few thousand career ladders for the youth to climb up in life. These are the channels of schooling and accepted carrier conduits we have collectively mastered and approved. Good as it may be – specialization – in a world desperate to create single-purpose beings, it deprives humanity of organicity, altering us into individual products of our collective minds.

Relish the freedom of uncertainty or enjoy a grossly predestined direction?