What will I be when I grow up?

Yesterday I was pondering (again) the journey I have taken - going so far away (physically, emotionally, intellectually) to find myself here in small town Alberta wanting to make a life here.  It is weird and perfectly normal all in the same moment.  I got home to find this lovely poem in my inbox, written by Ben Hanbury - one of my MSc classmates and I asked him if I could share it.  Thank you Ben for finding words for what many of us likely feel:


What will I be when I grow up? - Ben Hanbury

After a lifetime of riding ocean swells, chasing storms, running from a little boy's pain of growing up, I find I am back where I started
In my bedroom

After a lifetime of questioning deeply, searching for meaning and going beyond. I find myself once again back at the beginning
Did I ever leave?

After a lifetime of searching for identity, belonging, a sense of worth
I find that these things come and go like the seasons

One moment I am a tree, roots planted firmly in the earth
The next I am a leaf blowing in the wind
When will I arrive?

I have no-thing to offer, but I have so much to give

I long for the certainty I once had
The devotion to the ocean

Everything has changed but something is the same

What is this new ocean of devotion?

Sometimes I am like a well, that will quench the thirst of those who come to drink. But for those who don't realise the nature of their thirst
I am invisible, a pale shadow of myself

When the Buddha knelt by the stream and let go of his bowl it floated upstream
This was a sign that awakening is possible

When I let go of my life sometimes it floats upstream into wholeness
Other times I get washed downstream and fall over a waterfall

I can find no refuge in the mundane world of the old paradigm
the world of becoming someone

I never want to become someone
I pray however to always be someone becoming