Make the most of the season you find yourself
Make the most of the season you find yourself in with the knowledge that this too shall pass.
During school holidays, I allow my eldest two to watch TV late into the night. I loved television as a child, and still do, therefore I understand their need to indulge in it once in a while. Many times, I make a point of watching something we all find interesting, but each time, I end up dozing midway especially if the watching is taking place in the evening. This always tickles them, and before they nudge me awake and tell me to go to sleep, they take a video of me, which they use to tease me the next day.
“Mum, don’t worry, you’re young at heart, and that is the only thing that matters…” my eldest once quipped after showing me one of those videos.
I once took my children to a theatre to watch a movie they had been bugging me about. We went for the 6pm showing, which I would later realise wasn’t a wise decision because I dozed off 10 minutes into the movie. A wasted ticket right there.
If you’re of my generation, I’m sure that those videos comparing energy levels in one’s 20s and 40s gets a chuckle out of you. In my 20s, I could get home from work in the evening, watch TV until 3am and then be in the office by 8am and put in meaningful work.
My TV experiences with my children are not unlike those I have with friends I met in high school and in college. Whenever we plan to ‘go out’, we all ensure that we’re at the venue latest 3pm, because by 9pm, latest 10pm, we are all exhausted, and can’t wait to start the journey home and sleep. Yet in our twenties, we would party until the wee hours of the morning and still make it to class or work, and later that evening, kick off a brand new party.
Nowadays, I laugh at my younger sister whenever I call her on a Friday or Saturday evening to find out where she is, and the answer is almost always, “home”. When she was in college and was still living at home, she would regularly call me to complain that she was never allowed to go anywhere and in the rare days when she was allowed to, she had to be home by 7pm.
“Ni bash gani huisha 7pm?!” she once raged, swearing that she would move out of our parents home on the same day she got a job. She was itching to go out there and have a good time like her peers, but the parents were unmoved. Not under their roof, they said.
Having been there myself, I urged her to be patient, that there will come a time when she would have all the freedom she wanted, and that eventually, the excitement would wear off and she would find herself staying indoors on a weekend out of choice. She had looked at me as if I had lost my mind and declared, “Never!”
Now look at her, curled on the sofa on a Saturday evening watching a series. Never say never.
I look around me at those behind me and those ahead of me and realise that it is such with the seasons of life, so embrace them as they come, rather than living through them yearning for the next season. For instance, your children won’t be young forever, they will grow up and leave to start their own lives, so enjoy the time you have together now. You may be at the hustling stage as you begin this journey called ‘adulting’, for majority, the hustling gets easier and you are able to afford those things that you never thought you would. Eventually, you will retire, either from your job, and if you run a business, you might have to hand over the reins or slowdown in its running as age catches up.
What am I getting at? Make the most of the season you find yourself in with the knowledge that this too shall pass.
