I have never been able to answer that question. Perhaps had I actually grown up I'd know by now. When I was a child, I told my parents that I wanted to be a lawyer, like Perry Mason, and I later reiterated that I wanted to go to college. They just stared at me. I've always loved architecture and astronomy, as well.
As a child, I spent hours and days and weeks building houses and entire cities out of anything and everything imaginable. But life went awry. I ended up in foster care and could not wait to get out on my own, and once I did, I wanted nothing more than to do an about face. I realized that I hadn't grown up; I had simply been biding my time.
Maybe none of us really ever grows up. Maybe some of us never take a good, long, hard look at our lives, our decisions, our luck and are just happy with how life has been progressing. Further, I think we've been trained to ask the wrong question. Perhaps the right question is, "What would you like to do when you grow up?" What skills would you like to use as an adult to support yourself and, maybe, a family? What we'd like to "be"? "Be" is an abstraction. It is present tense--non-evolving. It makes it seem as though we are always present and whole and unchanging. It makes it seem as if we are totally defined by who we think we are, what we can make-up, rather than by our actions, or even by the perceptions of others. Just as we don't have the time to get to know everyone we see or meet, not everyone has that time for us, either. Unfortunately, that often leads us to make assumptions about other people, since the world can actually be a dangerous place to be. Very rarely are we defined in the larger society by who we are; we're defined by how we're perceived, and we often have to work at changing those perceptions. We can cry foul. However, that behavior, those assumptions... may also be related to the instinct to survive. I know that if I sense danger, I go the other way. God gave us instincts for a reason, and we were born perfect and with perfect instincts. I am as I do, but only to those who know me well enough to know what I do. As for what I want to be when I grow up, to answer that question I might have to grow up first, because then I'll know what I want to be, because I'll be it.
Comments