We should nurture passion in young people

You know how once KCPE or KCSE results come out, they start to interview top candidates?

They tell us all about how hard they worked, then they tell us what they’d like to study once they get to university or college.

Most of those dreams are superb. Big dreams.

Astrology, neuroscience, law, medicine, aerospace engineering.

I just love it when kids know what they want to be when they grow up because not everyone has an inkling of what they want to do with their lives.

I, for one, was one of those kids who never knew the answer to ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’

I was smart (still am, I hope), but I didn’t know what I should do with all that smartness.

So when kids these days want to do such big things and they are passionate about changing the world in their own way, I can't help but root for them.

When one of the top candidates in the 2021 KCSE exams was being interviewed on TV, she said she wanted to be an astronomer.

I was watching with my family and a bunch of us laughed at that. Like, that dream is too big for her.

But she seemed to know what she was talking about, in terms of what it might take to become an astronomer.

I liked how she spoke with such passion and I hope she keeps it alive as much as possible.

Once you lose passion, you’re only further away from your purpose. What you are actually meant to be doing with your life.

I’ve been trying to help my sister figure out what she wants to pursue in college or in life generally and like me, she hasn’t been inclined towards a specific field or career.

I’ve been passionate about many things in my life, so I’m not quite sure of the one thing I am truly passionate about.

My mother seems to think I have always been passionate about journalism and music.

That is probably because when I was a child, I would record myself singing or just talking over my parents’ Lingala Radio Cassette tapes.

In retrospect, I think I just loved to hear the sound of my voice.

Also, they never really nurtured that ‘passion’, so I never took it seriously.

But she was on to something when she said that because, as I grew older, I developed a knack for storytelling.

I read somewhere that looking for clues from how we played as children can help us find our true passion.

“The archives of our childhood playtime memories can serve as bread crumbs that lead us onto the path where our passion lies,” the article said.

I seem to keep coming back to storytelling no matter where my new passionate pursuits take me, so I think I’ll keep doing that and see what happens.

My sister is a hard nut to crack because she has never been interested in one thing for a very long time, so it's hard to know what she might be passionate about.

She excels at being a lastborn, though, so, we’ll keep exploring that.