It seems like only a year or two ago, I was grappling with issues like, “Where do you put the baby when you’re making the bed?” or “How do you get a toddler to slip her hands into the sleeves of her jacket without taking away the cookie in her hand?”
Any parent would agree that when you first encounter these puzzles, they look like gigantic world-ending problems while they may seem like silly trivial issues to other people. But as time goes by, you begin to get the drift of things and the toughest head-scratchers become as easy as pudding.
It comes with growing up. You start to think about things like school fees, land rates – even mid-life crisis, divorce, lifestyle diseases like hypertension or even dealing with your aging parents’ problems.
Internally, you are grappling with a whole new set of fears. The fear of boredom, not leaving a legacy and becoming a burden to others in your old age start to creep into your life. Politically, it’s where the country is at the moment. We are all of a sudden not thinking about growing pains any more. We are in a mid-life crisis where we don’t want to pretend we are happy any more. Life is too short for that. Now change is not something we want because it’s more exciting. Change is what we want because if we don’t, in a few years, we might have nothing. Nothing for our children to inherit.
So as you think about investing for the future, setting things straight with your loved ones, trying to make quality and not quantity time with your children... try and think about how you can make some of these adjustments in society as well.
Ahead of International Women’s Day this Wednesday, think about the mark you will leave behind – the kind that cannot be erased from history. You either make it count or don’t do it at all. Go bold or go home.