When I was twenty, I had a pretty clear picture of what my forties would look like.
I don’t remember all the details, but I know for a fact it didn’t include standing in my driveway in the early morning wearing yesterday’s t-shirt while wondering why my son had gone suspiciously quiet.
It definitely didn’t include planting flowers.
That’s probably the part that would surprise my younger self the most.
If you’ve read this blog recently, you’ll know that I know very little about flowers. I can identify a dandelion with a confidence level of about ninety percent. Beyond that, I’m mostly guessing. Yet somehow I found myself wandering around garden centres this spring, buying flowers and putting them into pots like I had any idea what I was doing.
Twenty-year-old me would have questions.
Actually, he’d probably have several.
Some of them would be fair.
At twenty, I thought I’d have everything figured out by now. I thought adults woke up one day and suddenly understood how life worked. I assumed there was a point where confidence arrived, handed you a map, and explained what came next.
Turns out that’s not how it works.
Most of us are just making the best decision we can with the information we have and hoping it doesn’t immediately catch fire.
The funny thing is that the older I get, the less my life resembles the one I imagined and the more I seem to like it.
I didn’t expect to spend my days helping homeless animals find homes.
I didn’t expect to be writing every week.
I certainly didn’t expect to be spending my evenings making up stories, thinking about characters, and staring at blank pages until they stopped being blank.
And I definitely didn’t expect that one of the best parts of my day would be hearing a tiny voice yell “Daddy!” from somewhere else in the house, usually right before something expensive, fragile, or important is placed in immediate danger.
None of those things were part of the plan.
Then again, I’m not entirely sure there ever was a plan.
There was just a rough sketch drawn by a younger version of me who thought life moved in straight lines.
Life, as it turns out, prefers detours.
It sends you to places you didn’t expect to live.
It introduces you to people you never expected to meet.
It gives you opportunities you weren’t looking for and responsibilities you never saw coming.
Some days it hands you flowers.
Some days it hands you a toddler who has somehow escaped the house in his pyjamas before you’ve had a chance to put on pants.
You deal with both as best you can.
I still don’t have everything figured out.
I still second-guess myself.
I still start projects without knowing exactly where they’re going.
I still buy flowers with the confidence of a man who has absolutely no business buying flowers.
But somewhere along the way, I stopped worrying so much about becoming the person I thought I’d be.
Maybe that’s because I’ve started to appreciate the person I actually became.
He’s not perfect.
He’s a little more tired than expected.
There’s more grey in his beard than he’d like.
He occasionally injures himself doing activities that shouldn’t result in injury.
And he still doesn’t know much about flowers.
But he’s doing alright.
The truth is, if I could sit down with the twenty-year-old version of myself, I don’t think I’d spend much time explaining where life went. I don’t think I’d tell him about the jobs, the moves, the successes, or the mistakes.
I’d probably tell him not to rush.
I’d tell him that some of the things he’s going to treasure most aren’t even on his radar yet.
The life he’s so busy planning for is going to look different from what he expects.
And one day, without really noticing when it happened, he’s going to look around at the people he loves, the work he’s proud of, the stories he’s telling, and the life he’s built, and realize he wouldn’t trade it for the one he imagined.
Not ever.
The CJBuzz 