It is that question every child is asked at least once, the one that always receives such cheerful, such adorable answers: "What do you want to be when you grow up?" But do you remember how you answered when you were first asked that question?

A doctor who can heal everyone, a superhero who can fly anywhere, a veterinarian who can talk to animals, a princess with fluffy dresses and a sparkling crown, a teacher who touches everyone's heart... Personally, whenever someone asked me, I would immediately blurt out, "A teacher!" without a second thought.

But was what we really wanted as children to grow up and actually enter that profession? Or did the fluorescent lights of the adult world look like magical sparkles through our childhood eyes? To a child, being an adult seems like a world where nobody can tell you no, where you can eat whatever you want, sleep whenever you want, watch as many cartoons as you like and do everything you could never do to your heart's content as a child. Yet the years sometimes pass faster than you could ever wish, and suddenly you find yourself at an age you once thought was so grown-up, still standing there with your little heart. And that is when another question appears before you: "What are you going to do now? What are you going to become?" The dreams that feel like they belong to yesterday begin to seem increasingly impossible through your grown-up eyes, gradually fading away. Your dreams turn into goals. When you say, "When I grow up..." people start laughing at you: "How much more do you expect to grow? You're a grown woman now!"

But what if I still want to grow? What if I want to take one more step, and then another; what if I want to be as brave as the adults I used to read about in my books... Maybe I'm a little tired, or perhaps more than a little. In fact, that's the only way I feel like an adult.

But then I think, isn't stumbling as we walk, sometimes being unsure of our steps, also part of growing up? Isn't feeling hopeless in the face of uncertainty actually life's way of placing a blank page in front of you, one you can write and draw on however you wish? So is growing up really hidden in our age, or is every step we take another part of the journey of growing?

I don't think growing up is a process limited to childhood. Growing up is that never-ending journey of expansion that stretches across all of life, for each person and for all humanity. The real journey of our soul's growth begins when our body stops growing. No matter what that cold reality beneath the fluorescent lights says, a person can still utter that magical phrase, "When I grow up..." in their thirties, fifties or seventies.

Because life is not a motionless finish line. Tomorrow's version of us will be a little more grown, a little more knowledgeable than the person we are today.

If being a grown woman means giving up dreaming and simply chasing goals and obligations, then I refuse to accept those limits. By treating the tiredness and fear inside me with compassion, I want to keep taking a new step every day, to keep becoming a little more myself each day. And I want to say it once again, freely and loudly enough for everyone to hear: When I grow up, I will become someone worthy of the dreams I had as a child.

Feyza Tekinkaya
Yücel Cultural Foundation
Volunteer Writer