As a kid, and even as a young 20-something year old, we get asked the same question:
Who do you want to DO when you grow up?
It’s an answer that changes, over and over again. When we’re five, we want to be astronauts. Then at the age of ten, we want to be professional athletes or artists. In high school, we want to be engineers, businessmen/women, or teachers. And then in college, that refines even more.
I like to play devil’s advocate: we are asking the wrong questions. We always ask people what they want to do not who do they want to be. The truth is, you can do anything and simultaneously be an amazing person, or a not-so-amazing person. We focus too much on the process, what we want to do day-to-day, and not so much on the end result, the end game.
For as long as I can remember, the vision of who I wanted to be, at its most simplest form was always consistent: honest, caring, well-rounded, and kind. It didn’t matter so much what I was doing as long as I liked how it made me feel, like I was helping others. So perhaps, we need to ask ourselves this question instead:
Who do you want to BE when you grow up?
Doing and being are two very different things, and perhaps if we focus on the quality of the person we want to become, we will consider different options, different choices, and other paths in this life. Not everything is a standard A+B=C approach in life. Sometimes, we take twists and turns we don’t expect. We follow roads we are unsure of, but it’s always the unexpected changes that bring out the most amazing results, whether we succeed or we learn in the end.
One of my favorite poems, if not my favorite poem of all time, says this, to a T:
Now, what is it going to be? Are you going to follow the path of those who have gone before you, or will you embark into the great unknown and embrace the surprises that lie ahead? In the end, it is all up to you.
