I'll Be Like You When I Grow Up

I once met a fifty-five year old man who blatantly told me that he
will be like me when he grows up. A successful man by many standards,
with a thriving business, two sons that were already university
graduates and so many other achievements that space will not allow me
to enumerate. I wondered what it was about me that this man desired so
much that prompted him to say what he said.

This got me thinking. Oftentimes we get so hard on ourselves that we
forget how to just live life. We tend to focus so much on the
yet-to-be-attained so much that we forget to be grateful for the
already-attained. We get so hard on ourselves that success becomes
something we attribute to folks other than ourselves. It just eludes
our consciousness that the people we envy often wish they were us.
With these thoughts in me, I opted to be less harsh on myself. I
became cognisant of the fact that there peers of mine who will give a
limb just to have half of what I already possess. Why then should I
keep flogging myself over the achievements of the few that are ahead
of me? I am not talking of giving up or living a clueless life. I have
only come to a realisation that the more grateful you are, the more
heights you attain.
This realisation did not come to me until I heard that the who desired
to be like me when he grows up, kicked the bucket in his pursuit of
that dream. You might think he joked when he made the comment, but the
way he lived his life showed a man who has interminable dreams and
aspirations. It wasn't about me. He wasn't competing with me either.
His statement simply captures the way his life was lived: it was
driven like a car without brakes. Such a life always ends in a fatal
crash.