Essay

In 5 years time, I simply see myself as a Senior Financial Analyst, at an International Bank, outside Lebanon.

A typical journey of a human always involves dreams of greatness, a tendency to achieve something big, to be someone important and famous, to excel in a field to the extent of being the best. My dreams as a child were no different; sometimes I even think that I was megalomaniac! I saw myself a future god.

And as every journey comes to a turning point, unfortunately my turning point was unique. It had a special bitterness in its impact, and bitterness in its recurrence. I am biased to call it turning point, because in fact, it was multiple walls that I hit, multiple dead-ends that I had to face and multiple nightmares that I had to overcome.

Where do I see myself in 5 years! In 5 years I will be 30. When I was 5, I would’ve answered that when I’m 30 I want to be an “astronaut”, when I was 10 I would’ve answered “doctor”, when I was 15 I would’ve answered “priest”, when I was 20 I would’ve answered “successful businessman”, and now I’m 25… Now, all I want to be when I am 30 is a hard working man, in the field that I have loved, and resident in a country that can provide for me the minimum level of security required to live a good and decent life.

Sometimes I ask myself what went wrong? What happened to those big dreams I had? What made them vanish? Can life be that cruel with someone who is simply just trying to live?! When I hit my first wall I was 10. The difficulties of life started weighing bad on my parents I had to face at that early age the fact that life isn’t Disneyland! [s