What do you want to be when you grow up?
I’m sure we’ve all heard this question before. How does it make you feel? It makes me feel uncomfortable and pressured to make a decision. It’s something that we may ask young children just for fun. You’re amused by their cute answers of: “I want to be a firefighter” or “I want to be an astronaut.” Yet, this question will continue to be posed as you grow up, until it reaches a point where people expect serious answers in return.
Every time I’ve been asked this question, I’ve responded truthfully with “I don’t know.” I’ve gotten a lot of different remarks, but the ones that gave me the most relief are: “That’s totally fine, I still don’t know what I want to be either, and I’m in my 20s.” Once upon a time, I used to also get the “Don’t worry, you still have time to figure it out.” Somewhat comforting. However, it has gradually become “You’re in Grade 12 now and you need to make a decision soon.” Yes, but what exactly am I making a decision on?
I grew up with the misconception that you have to dedicate your life to one thing. So, I thought that I would have to find that thing and that’s what I would do for the rest of my life. It may seem exaggerated, but I genuinely believed this for a long time. This never sat well with me, because the prospect of only getting to do one thing for the rest of my life seemed utterly boring and also suffocating. I had so many different interests that I dreaded having to sacrifice parts of who I am in order to pursue only one area.
Life is filled with choices and it can be paralyzing. Rather than two roads diverging in a yellow wood, it can be hundreds, all of which seem equally dangerous and rewarding. There is the fear of regret. Regret that by entering one door, you close the rest, and perhaps the door you chose isn’t what you really wanted. An individual can stand forever at those crossroads, weighing their options, but never actually choose a path. Until…
This brilliantly poignant comic was made by zenpencils.com and is an illustration of a passage from Sylvia Plath’s novel The Bell Jar. I can definitely relate to it, especially because I’m such an indecisive person. I used to be envious of those who always knew what they wanted to do, as if they had been lucky enough to have their destiny revealed to them early on. However, after talking to many people over the years, I soon realized that very few, if any, people knew where life would take them. People change their minds all the time, which is not a sign of wasted time, but rather opportunity for new growth. This lightened the immense pressure that I felt about the finality of choices.
Why do some of us don’t just have one true calling?
When I make a decision about what I want to do after Grade 12, it is a decision about direction. It is a direction to explore, but it does not mean I’m limited to that specific field forever. I recently found a TED Talk by Emilie Wapnick, titled “Why some of us don’t have just one true calling.” In it, Wapnick used the term “multipotentialite” to describe people with many interests and creative pursuits. Sounds like someone I know – me.
Instead of seeing this as a weakness, she says we should use this to our advantage. She points out 3 key strengths to multipotentialites: idea synthesis, rapid learning and adaptability. She defines idea synthesis as “combining two or more fields and creating something new at the intersection.” Though I hadn’t realized it previously, throughout my whole life, I loved making the different connections between different disciplines. Each time this happened, it was like connecting strands of a spider web and that I was gradually creating a network of intertwining knowledge.
This ties in with rapid learning, which talks about the ambition to explore new things and utilizing transferable skills. Everything I’ve learned has helped me in some way and helps to be a more well-rounded person and see from multiple perspectives. The skills that I learn from a specific field can be carried over into a seemingly opposite field. Writing has taught me valuable communication skills and allowed me to explore my creativity. Music has taught my discipline, but also the importance of arts in general. Volunteering has taught me interpersonal skills and the joy of giving back. All those tiny pieces connect to make a bigger picture of my identity and what I have to offer.
Lastly, adaptability means being able to wear different hats depending on the situation. I am one person, but I am multi-faceted. I am a writer, a musician, a scientist, a teacher, a counselor, all at the same time. Depending on the situation, I can draw from my pool of knowledge and find a creative solution. What I love most about this TED Talk is that it recognizes the benefit of having both specialists and multipotentialites in the world. When they work together on a project, specialists can provide focused in-depth knowledge while multipotentialites can offer new ideas based on their wide range of knowledge. We need both types of people in the world.
The problem with “What do you want to be when you grow up?” is its limiting nature. You can’t reply back with 20 different answers, because they’ll just say that you have to pick one. In reality, people are infinitely complex and always changing. I’ve interviewed several of my teachers in my school and most of them explained that they didn’t start out wanting to be a teacher. They came out of high school, followed what they thought they wanted, and ended up continuously changing their minds about the direction of their lives until they ended up what they are now. It’s normal. It’s what everyone goes through. It’s relieving.
Should we regret which path we take?
Robert Frost’s poem The Road Not Taken ends with him saying that he took the road less traveled and by and it “has made all the difference.” When I first read the poem, I used to think that “difference” meant that it has changed his life for the better. However, I started realizing that “difference” can also be interpreted in a more negative way. What if going down one of the roads actually made his life worse? Nowadays, I view “difference” as ambiguous, because he can never know which path was better, just that it has changed his life.
Just as it is destructive to sit under the fig tree and contemplate all of your options without actually choosing one, it is detrimental to obsess over the road not taken. It is easy to fall into the habit of fantasizing about what your life could’ve been if you had taken the other path. I would’ve been happier. I would’ve made more money. I wouldn’t have faced as many obstacles as I did now. This type of attitude stems from being unsatisfied with your current life and the desire to change your choices that led up to it. Consequently, you ignore the positive aspects of what’s in front of you, because you’re constantly looking back.
Go down a path and embrace it for what it’s worth. You’ll waste your time and energy trying to imagine yourself in a more ideal life. You may want to backtrack and find the old crossroads, but you’ll never find it. There is no path without its own set of challenges and rewards. No path is easy, but every path will help you grow as a person. Therefore, there are no right or wrong decisions in life, just decisions. Perhaps there are no mistakes, only happy accidents. Experiencing failure can teach humility. Experiencing hardship can teach resiliency. Experiencing loss can teach gratefulness.
Yes, decisions will have consequences. Choosing a road will make a difference. However, it’s up to you to accept your choices and to find what it can teach you. There is no such thing as a “grown up”, because we are always growing. It causes unnecessary stress to see graduation from high school as a big leap into “real life.” Life is more of a gradient, a continuum of growing up. That’s why when you’re 25 or 50, you can still be questioning who you really are and what you want from life.
Who are you right now?
The last thing I want to address about “What do you want to be when you grow up” is the implication that who you are right now isn’t good enough. While it is true that there is always more to learn and improve on, you should also recognize the progress you’ve made. If you try to look too far ahead, you lose sense of who you are at the moment.
You won’t wake up one day and become a doctor. In that time span between your current self and becoming a doctor, do not think that you are inadequate just because you haven’t reached your end goal. It’s about progress, like climbing a mountain. You can either look up at the summit in the distance and be intimidated by how much further you have to go. Or you can look down and see how far you’ve come. That will bring back into focus who you are and what you’ve learned along the way. You do not have to grow up to a certain age or achieve a certain goal to appreciate your current identity. Happiness lies in the now, not in the someday.
Next time you’re asked “What do you want to be when you grow up?” I think it’s natural to feel uncomfortable and pressured. However, do not worry too much. You do not just have to be one thing in your life, especially if you have a wide range of interests. Do not be afraid to move forward, be afraid of standing still. Nothing you learn or experience goes to waste .Instead of regretting your past, learn from it and face the future with an open mind. No one knows exactly where their choices will take them, but embrace the journey. You are on the literary hero’s journey, which is filled with conflicts, mentors, and ultimately, transformation of the self.