Do you remember the first time you were asked, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”
Talk about pressure. I’d imagine that shortly after mastering your ABCs, adults stood over you during a family party expecting a charming answer. You would have breathed a sigh of relief when the adults smiled and patted your head after you blurted out the first thing you remembered from your community helpers picture book.
Career contemplation. In the end Dora decides to pursue her lifelong passion. |
It took many seconds before I could think of an answer for my adults. I was thinking I didn’t want to be an engineer like my father because his textbooks had scary looking squiggly characters on them that looked like they came from a can of worms. At that time, I did not want to be a teacher like my mother either because she always looked like a bag of nerves.
So I told them I wanted to be a dentist. But I was as likely to jump into the field of dentistry as my molars were from developing athlete’s foot. After watching several episodes of Star Trek, I decided I’d rather be an astronaut instead. I quickly abandoned the idea when I found out that I could not even “Find X” (X seems perpetually lost too) in high school and that owning a scientific calculator does not make people develop an understanding for calculus.
I’ve had to undergo several different mutations where I thought I finally figured out the perfect identity. It’s seems however, that it’s now really anyone’s guess what I want to be or what I am now. Unlike Bong Revilla who is absolutely certain that he is a senator and not a thief or a wolf in senator’s clothing, I have absolutely no idea what I am.
I’ve given up trying to put a deadline on becoming a successful someone because I realized that the more I panicked, the more I missed out on other things like sleep, food, fun, my kids’ birthdays… oh, and is that my life passing me by? I didn’t even recognize it.
So I resolve to be calmer. The answer to that decades old question will come to me and it doesn’t have to be right this very minute.