When is It My Turn to Be Whom I can Be?

"When is it finally going to be my turn to be the person I was meant to be?"

Now that is a question. We ask ourselves that question from the time we are children until the moment we die. And for most of us, the answer we get is never quite satisfactory.

While we are children and in our early teens, our parents control our lives. They set the boundaries and limit the extent to which we can do our own thing. We chafe at the constraints on our lives and we can't wait until we can leave home and live on our own.

So when it is time to head off for college, we leap feet first into the world. But when we get there, it isn't exactly what we thought we would find. There are still constraints on our options, only we have substituted the university for our parents. We have a lot more latitude in deciding what we are going to do or when we are going to do it. But now the onus is more and more on us to make our lives work, and at that stage of our lives we don't fully understand the rules of the game... the game of life... the treacherous game of relationships... the game of sexual exploration... the game of becoming a success. And at that point we don't even comprehend what it means to be successful or the price we might have to pay for being successful. Nothing is clear cut anymore and the possibiliy that we might screw up royally is very real.

Most of us survive that particular right of passage, meet our one and only, get married and maybe have kids. Once again we ask the question, "When is it going to be my time?" But bills have got to be paid. Our time becomes scarcer and the time to do the things we personnaly want to do, gets lost in taking the kids to soccer practice or to school, going to some social event because your significant wants to go, having to work overtime because a project has to be finished by deadline, and so on.

So when the kids grow up and graduate from college, is it our time then? No. There will simply be another set of challenges and problems and demands on our time.

And then it will be time to take care of our parents when they get old and can no longer take care of themselves. The sand is running out in the hourglass and we still haven't been allowed to occupy the center of the universe for even a short time. Our lives continue to be about someone else who we have to take care of. There never seem to be enough hours in the day and it seems increasingly like that with each passing year.

And then we get old, and the possiblilties wither away and die.

At least that is how it might seem to us. The reality is probably that it will never be purely our time to be whom we might be. We never get 100 per cent or even 80 per cent of what we want in life. That is not how the world works. And we do not make it in the world on our own. Many people along the way have helped us and made it possible for us to achieve the successes we enjoy. Other people impact our lives and we impact the lives of others. Picture billiard balls on a pool table. One ball strikes another and sends the second ball in a diffeent direction than it was going in the first place. Each of us is a billiard ball of sorts and our lives take the circuitous route it takes, because we are changed by the people we meet and the events of our respective lives. The accidental collisions with other people shape and form us.

We live our lives as part of a larger family or group. For none of us is it ever "our time" because we are forced by circumstances to share our meager resources of time or talent and sometimes money with other people. Our lives are about "... you and me and us together."

Believing that there is an actual answer to the question, "When is it my turn?": is one of illusions to which we cling fiercely. The world in which that question might be answered does not exist.

It is never any one person's time to be. However, if we are very fortunate, we will find someone to share our lives and then it will be "Our Time," to grow and to find support and love and joy together. It takes a long time to fully digest that fact. But when we do, life can become very good for us and each day becomes quality time with the people who are really important to us.