WHEN I GROW UP…

Syireen Rose Sha’aria

“I still wanted to save the world. I loved it! I loved the outcome of every effort. I loved my love for my world.”

“When I grow up, I want to be Wonder Woman”. I wanted to grow up and save the world. Eradicate the world of famine. Pay all the water and electricity bills. Use my super powers and put all the bad guys in jail. Plant more trees. Clean the ocean. Play with penguins. Swim with killer whales. Wipe all tears and put smiles on every face I meet. I was really ambitious about being happy. The world was my oyster and I knew how to have fun. I love my universe bubble. I was an amazing hero. I could do anything! And I did!

With a mind like mine, I couldn’t hold a single interest at a single moment. I’m always multitasking. There’s so much to do and so little time. I had to do everything because everything mattered, and I am a hero! I did everything! I loved being me. One year I’d go all out and fight for women’s right against violence. Next year it’ll be about saving the ocean. Then another year I’d spend night and day serving the underserved. I spent many years loving children lost in oblivion because they were severely handicapped and in one phase of my life, watched beds change bodies as elderlies were abandoned by their children - losing their homes and hope in makeshift dorms. I was doing everything and felt everything that came with it. It suddenly became a spiral of emotions that took a toll on me without me truly grasping it. I still wanted to save the world. I loved it! I loved the outcome of every effort. I loved my love for my world.

“I began to adopt other people’s thoughts and values. It seemed more stable.”

I was always a bolt of energy and a bundle of erratic emotions spilling uncontrollably out of my Being. I remembered a peer saying to me, “if you only knew how to manage all that energy shooting erratically out of you, what a powerful woman you’d be”. I was not interested and was too busy to listen. I really wanted to save the world, until I shrunk and the world grew too huge for me. As my age piled on me, and the term ‘student’ no longer cloaked my best of intentions to get support, I began to question, “Is my purpose unrealistic?” Can I really save the world?

I started to hear things. People saying that I was fake, undecided, fickle-minded and at 30-years old, having spent all my time and energy to my world – I was left on the floor broken and defeated. I too, began to consume these conversations against me and thought that I had led a very superficial life and without a real purpose. I concluded in my 30s that I was disillusioned and I couldn’t save the world. When a child’s death in one of the homes I served reached my ears and I was not there to save her, I couldn’t take it anymore. I could still see her screaming to greet me and hug me goodbye. She suffered from multiple mental handicaps and though it was meant to be, it broke the camel’s back for me.

I began to adopt other people’s thoughts and values. It seemed more stable. My life purpose was no longer practical – it was a childish dream. People are going to die anyway. The sea is going to be polluted anyway. The icebergs are going to melt anyway. So, I learned to walk and talk to be liked – no longer to be heard. I dressed and showed up at events that were trending and mattered – no longer to make a difference. I did everything that everyone else said was good and got a pat on my back for being relevant. I thought I felt happier. I thought my life purpose was stabilized - whatever that meant. In the process of doing everything everyone else was doing; losing my sense of purpose and adopting lives that were not mine, one thing that I have learned to be grateful for is my ability to write. I wrote everything! Looking back, I do cringe at some of my venting and sarcastic wisdom, which were more accepted as clever at the time of writing…then one man asked me, “until when will you live in other people’s expectations?” “Are these words truly yours?” Ouch. That hurt. I took pride in my words and the intentions behind it.

While people around me were calling me clever and interesting, he shoved a dagger into my heart and although I retorted in indignance, “yes!” I told him, indeed, those were my words, but silently loathed myself, for I was blatantly lying. I had completely deceived myself and robbed me of my truth. Ending my 30s, I still wanted to save the world but I had lost my way. As I reached my 40th birthday I arrived at my all-time low. I attended a program that did everything I despised. I sang songs in a circle that felt very woo-woo. I cried buckets and had snots everywhere. Tissues were my new-found friend. I also befriended strangers and poured my heart out - suddenly revisiting many past-lives that had mattered to me but I’d buried out of fear, frustration and selfproclaimed defeat. While I felt the world was against me, in that program, I discovered that it was just me, myself and I was fighting me. There, I remembered that I really wanted to save the world. There, I also learned the power of love and support that comes from being true to self. There, I met likeminded souls who also believed in good and saving the world. Indeed, the world is a huge ball of challenges, but every trouble comes with a solution…I didn’t have to do it all by myself.

There were many more people loving the world as much as I do. I was simply too busy with myself to look up and get support, to be in collaboration, be with likeminded people so I can focus doing what I do best and support others in their mastery. I needed to revisit the word PURPOSE. I had to revisit Wonder Woman.

At 40, I reflected at how little I really understood my life’s purpose, until, I dived into my truth. My mentor would tell me that for many of us, our life’s purpose will forever elude us. I love my mentor but I had to disagree. I believe that our life’s purpose is gifted to us from the get go, and we live it every day. We’re just oblivious to our own actions because it is in our nature that all our “being” becomes mundane and ordinary. If we could ‘see’ that our purpose is ONE with our Being and it makes us who we are, we’d realize that we have always been living our purpose. Today, I would say that our life purpose is in witnessing the vast greatness that was given to us and our role in preserving it. We are all pieces of a greater jigsaw puzzle with individual brilliance and mastery, that when put together becomes a mighty force that saves the world. Don’t we all know it? Yes, we do. So, why are we not saving the world, yet? The ache is in not being able to be mighty saviors because we are too busy fighting the ‘others.’ Instead of being a unit of the human race, we are busy being angry because the ‘others’ worldviews, culture and creed, don’t match our personal benchmarks. We are so busy being righteous and demanding for our rights, we forget that it is everyone’s right to be living peacefully on mother earth. The universe never makes a mistake by putting us all here together - it is us, who refuse to be one with our life’s purpose.

Would it be fair to say, that no one wants the world destroyed? In essence, we ALL want to save the world. Every single one of us wake up every day with the intention to uphold our dream to save an element of the world.

I invite you to: - Listen - See - Feel We are truly ONE in purpose. We want fresh air. We want clean water. We want peace. We want love… Imagine a world of every individual given the opportunity and access to saving that one element of the world he/she is passionate about; in the air, in the forest, in the desert, in the water and everything else in between, for all the living – what is possible for us? Imagine the power when our true purpose unites and becomes one.

I’m turning 47 in a few days of writing this piece and I’m still wanting to be Wonder Woman when I grow up…by my own terms. Knowing now that the world has so many ‘others’ wanting to save it too…why not collaborate and win!

You can contact Syireen at:

Email: syireenrose@gmail.com Telephone: +601 9388 1774