Do you know what you want to be when you grow up?
You probably have already answered that question, haven’t you? You’ve gone to college, gotten a degree or two, and are probably well entrenched in your vocation.
But is it that simple?
I teach Chinese kids English online. One of the questions I ask while getting to know them is what they want to be when they grow up. I get the typical answers, their dreams not much different in that sense from the kiddos I talk to in America.
It’s not their answers that surprise me. Instead, these days, it’s my response to the very question I’m asking that surprises me. I don’t feel comfortable asking it, at least in those words, because I don’t feel comfortable with the implications. Namely, the implication that what we are is what we do for a living.
What do you want to be? What are you? What do you do?
Do we really want to answer that question with a job title? After all, is one an accountant, or is one a human being with myriad loves and joys, hopes, dreams, and struggles? Who makes money crunching numbers.
I think this question is bothering me at this juncture because I’m trying to decide if I’ll re-enter the workforce in a couple of years and if I do, what that will look like. At the same time, I’m trying to take my writing more seriously and see if I can take it anywhere. The where I want to take it is what I’m not so sure of.
I guess, in the end, we all have questions about how to define who we are and what we do and where we are going. We are all tasked with finding the paths that lead to a meaningful and purposeful life. How we answer those questions, in fact how we even perceive the questions asked, will in large part determine the life we will have led.
So what are your questions? What is it you want to answer with your life? Which priorities are worth staking it all on? What can you say yes to and what can you say no to and feel at peace with when you lay your head down one final time?
In the words of Mary Oliver, “What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
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