What do you want to be when you grow up?

This question always annoyed me somewhat during my childhood. Most probably because everyone around me seemed to have a clear-cut answer along with that excited look on their face for the grown ups who - (often) squatting next to you - did their best to look interested. The best answer I remember producing during these early and fragile years was "police officer", copying some other guys answer from class. I sort of lacked the excitement an aspiring police officer would manifest, when laying out his future plans, but at least the grown ups would leave you alone - for a while.

Meanwhile in my free time, I was borrowing every single book on dinosaurs, space, animals and nature from the libraries. preferably those with cool pictures in them. I developed an obsession for drawing animals from the books, neatly cutting them into shapes and sticking them onto my window. One day I was almost home from school and - to my horror - found orangutans, bears and penguins on the street pavement below my window... Supposedly the wind took them. Whenever my parents let me hold the camera during walks to the park and such, the focus went straight towards pigeons, ducks and whatever other animal I could find in sight. I began cataloguing the creatures I had caught on film in some folder, and received much satisfaction from - sitting cross-legged in our living room - watching the collection.

Fast-forward a couple of years. 

I'm now about to turn 18 and and still can't produce a satisfactory answer as to what I will be focusing my career on.  I specifically remember saying that: "If money wasn't an issue, I would totally work at a zoo or something." But I know better. Right? You need to be mature and realistic about it. Right? I had been busting my ass in school my entire life, awarded with good grades and a seat waiting for me in law school. On paper I was supposed to be happy. Inside I was getting more and more hollow, and then everything changed. I was playing Nintendo Wii one evening with a buddy of mine, flapping our arms, trying to knock the other guy out in some glitchy boxing game. Suddenly I started getting this annoying chest pain that just kept escalating in intensity.  I ended up going to the emergency room with my dad, had some x-ray images taken and found out I had a tumor in my chest the size of 1/4 rugby ball. 

Sometimes in life stuff happens to you that you INSTANTLY know will change everything. This was one of those moments. Time s l o w e d down, the outside world and your time in it, with all it's career anxiety, broken relationships, wars, food, sex, gossip, expectations. All of it muted in one stroke. I stayed at the hospital for one whole week until further tests could be made and needless to say had a lot on my mind. It is even tempting to say that those days made me who I am today, for better and for worse. Nothing short of dying and being reborn can describe the mental process I underwent. Will I live to see the end of the year? Will I have time to experience true love? What would happen to my parents if I died? Those were some of the questions that kept buzzing in my head. Oddly enough, the most heart-wrenching questions were the ones that had to do with my priorities in life. Had i been happy thus far, IF this was my time to go? A long and silent pause filled the room. To have asked the question was to answer it...

The truth was that I had lost all concept of what really made me happy. The word, happy, to me both carried a sort of vagueness but also a profound clarity to it, since I knew for certain that I wasn't happy. I had become an expert on suppressing my feelings - sacrificing my today for the promise of a better tomorrow. Following directions and meeting expectations no matter where they came from, as long as they weren't my own. 

Following a successful surgery and a couple of annual check-ups - showing no signs of complications or regrowth - it began to dawn on me that I had dodged a bullet. For a couple of years, I was YOLO personified. As I would like to see it, catching up on the lost years from my previous life. Slowly but surely though, I was beginning to develop my own version of YOLO. Not one where you live like a pirate but rather one in which you try to do something meaningful and equally important, personally fulfilling, with your life. I am not gonna lie to you. It was extremely difficult for me to clarify what I liked or who I was, even to myself! All this time I had been looking to others for answers when it had been staring me in the face all along. (Yes dear reader, I will finally reconnect my story to the intro now).

As I'm writing this, a relatively new and strong mood is present in me. I, am present to the world and to myself. Even as late as last week, I hadn't the slightest clue of what I wanted to be or to do in life. With two months left of law school that fact began to take its toll on me. It wasn't until I began connecting all of the dots that it hit me like a ton of bricks: I am going to focus my entire life, in one way or another, on promoting and preserving nature, wildlife, and our common heritage - The earth.  Whether it be through my legal expertise, by artistic means, or simply by being the change I want to see in the world. When I look at it now in reverse, it all seems obvious and straight-forward, but it's hard to get a clear view when you're in the trenches. It was the culmination of tons of soul-searching, bumping into dead ends, voracious reading and time alone. REAL victory is truly sweet though.

If anything, I want this text to...

  • Give you permission to be vulnerable
  • Make you trust your gut feeling more often. An idea is not untrue just because it originates in you.
  • Echo the fact that time is our only limited currency 
  • Remind you of our responsibility towards the planet and to ourselves. The world has lots of unmet needs and monstrous circumstances for the weak and poor. But even if we got rid of all injustice TODAY, it would still mean very little to us if our earth meanwhile is ruined.

 With that said, this is the first blog entry (of many to come) on my website. Some of you visited it a while back when it was brand new, and had no real reason to return, since I wasn't as active as I wanted to be at the time. All of that is about to change. And if you liked this post then please feel free to leave a comment or to share it with someone who might need to hear its message. I will be posting all things related to nature and wildlife, photography, book reviews, interviews with influencers, diaries from my journeys abroad, personal development and much, much more :)

"Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life" - Steve Jobs