Big Dreams – Sunday Scribblings #204

When I was 14, all I wanted when I grew up was to own a yellow jeep.  A friend had promised me that when he grew up and made lots of money that he would buy it for me.  I also wanted to be the one out of my friends who didn’t get married.  I wanted to be wearing Birkenstocks travelling the world, ending up in India, where I would teach and then adopt a child and live happily ever, spending our lives changing the world for children everywhere. I wanted to be strong, soulful and independent.

So…. now, I am grown up and actually, I don’t have that jeep, I live in Switzerland (soon to be back in London), I am married and have a six month old baby.

These are not the dreams that I had when I was 14.  But if you asked me, I would tell you I am living my dream.

You see, the dream I had was to change the world one child at a time.  But I thought I had to do that in India, or Africa or some war torn country, so that I would be “making a difference”.  What is making a difference, anyway?

After teaching in East London, I realised you don’t have to be thousands of miles away to make a difference.  There are plenty of inner city schools in cities all over the developed world that need dedicated teachers.  Some of the children in these schools are sometimes just as needy as the children you might come across in a developing country.

But even more than that, each child I met teaching at that school changed my life just a little bit; made me a better teacher and a better person, from the inside out.  So I learned that it wasn’t about being so presumptuous to assume that I would be the one “making the difference”.  Instead it was the children who made the difference to me and the teacher I have become.

So the dream changed a little.

And long story short, Baby Bee came into our lives.  She wasn’t adopted, like I had decided. But creating a baby and giving birth has changed my life in so many amazing ways.  I wanted to be strong and soulful.  Making and caring for BB is making me strong and feeding my soul in ways I could never have planned or dreamed of.

And the Big Dream changed again.

So it doesn’t mean that I won’t travel India wearing Birkenstocks, teaching at a little school and adopting a baby.  But it does me that the dream is bigger now and there is still so much time to make it real.

I’ll just have to take F and Baby Bee with me!

More Big Dreams at Sunday Scribblings