Is one lifetime enough?

Have you ever been in a bit of an existential panic? I have! It kinda happened to me when I turned 30 and not for the reasons that you might imagine. 

The prospect of getting a few grey’s or a deepening of lines around my eyes are very real (can you believe, I am now beginning to look at eye creams in stores!), and I’m sure gravity will begin having its way with me someday, but that isn’t quite what’s on my mind just yet. 

The reason that I’m in so much of a spin is that I want to do a hundred different things, be successful at them and fulfilled all at the same time. 

My wish list reads something like this...

I want... to cook and bake and run my own coffee shop… make sparkly cookies, sumptuous cakes and delectable savouries that will have people rolling on the floor of my shop in spasms of delight, reminiscing about times where everything was whole, good and sweet. 

I want... to decorate hands, feet and canvases with all the artistic expressions of henna that are bottled up in my heart and soul. I want to cover surfaces with it, saturate the world with all the painstaking love for these designs that are in my heart

I want... to write, produce and create short films and inserts that capture beautiful pieces of life, creating catalogues of dreams. Create a centre that offers skills exchange from people in polar opposite circumstances, have my coffee shop and arts spring up around them. Enveloping us all in an artistic, magical protective cocoon.  

I want... and need to travel, I want to have the time and the energy to explore cities, visit monuments, listen to the essence of the beautiful stories captured and paved in the pebble stones of new places. I want to look into the eyes of people who don’t speak my language and just understand, purely through the common denominator of being human!  

I want to meet new people, share skills, find common ground and drink in the diversity found in their lives and experiences.

I want... to write a book that makes no excuses for being unashamedly  emotional, that talks to experiences of being a woman, a South African, of being having the soul of an artist, filled with grit and yet optimism all at the same time.

I want... to give back, to teach, to be taught, soak up, to soak in, to revel, to engage, to be great, to contribute, to stand out, to meld into, to explode onto a scene, to have my spirit dance, to breathe in life, inhale it until my lungs hurt, to have squishy hugs that render me speechless and I want to reach the ultimate height of my being and then exceed that. I want to fall to my feet, grasp handfuls of sea sand and feel them filter gently out of tightly enclosed fists.

I want... to feel the sun dance across my face, to laugh until tears trickle down my face, I want to be as strong as a warrior princess, with a soul as delicate as the gossamer wings of a butterfly. I want to get inside every moment and every experience, inhabit it, talk about it, write about it, make art about it, laugh about it, maybe even cry about it. 

The ultimate question… can I fit all of this into one lifetime?