WHAT DO YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU ‘GROW UP’?

REMEMBER how excited you’d get as a child when you were asked this? The language we used as if it was undoubtedly going to happen. More often than not we would say multiple things of completely different fields and it didn’t even matter the plausibility of them all actually happening. I don’t know about you but at one stage I was going to become a crime scene investigator, ballerina, and professional singer whilst owning a dog rescue shelter.

The older we got the more our answers would change. Month to month, year to year. And this to us was fine! Because we were so young and we had so much time to figure it out when we reached that place that everyone referred to as ‘older’. We had no shame that it was constantly changing or unknown. Back then when asked the words that resonated with us were ‘want’ and ‘be’. So at what point in our lives does the excitement of not knowing turn to fear and the emphasis changes to the word ‘older’.  Why is it that when we’re asked at the mere age of sixteen when doing senior subject selection does our excitement change to angst of not knowing?

Some part of me envies the people that know without a question of a doubt what they want/need to do with their life, their purpose, how they are going to get there and that are on their way. I used to be one of those people. On my way I was! Or so I thought. I dove head first into a university degree hoping to end up becoming a Japanese teacher, only to realise that that social science and English language subjects were what actually liberated me. Having nearly finished, I stuck it out completing my degree all the while knowing my major wasn’t what made me spark.

And just like that I was thrown into the whirlwind of confusion that is early twenties.

Now I’ve graduated I’m still being asked the question, though now I’m at an age that’s considered ‘grown up’, it is masked with questions like “so what are you doing with yourself now, got yourself a good job?” And I absolutely hate it. It is at this time that I had never felt so stuck in my life.

See little did I know that when adults would ask us “what do you want to be when you grow up”, what they actually meant was “what do you want to decide to become between the ages of 16-24 that’s going to provide you with financial stability and job security for the rest of your working life.” Now that I’ve reached a stage I’m considered ‘grown up’, after being told I had all these possibilities and endless time, now I must decide! There’s no reassurance for not knowing and no praise and encouragement for self discovery if it means a career unknown.

In today’s generation many of us are so fortunate to have the range of opportunities at our reach. I don’t believe the question should be “what do you want to do when you grow up”, I believe it should be “what are you going to do with yourself first.” More importantly I believe more emphasis should be on questions like, “what makes you spark? And what do you have to positively contribute to this world?” Teaching to embrace the unknown and lost as hopeful and exciting rather than shameful and overwhelming.

Lastly I would love to be educated on the importance of fulfilment with the response to the question not always being a career, but simply wanting to be happy.