You know when you were little and an adult would ask you, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”
You’d be at school and you’d go around in a circle and say you wanted to be a firefighter or dancer or singer or doctor or lawyer. You’d draw a picture of yourself in a princess dress or a policeman uniform and everyone would say, “You can be anything you want to be.”
Remember that? I must have changed my mind a thousand times. I remember when I was 4 I wanted to be a backup dancer for Ace of Base, then when I was 9 I wanted to be a chef in a fancy restaurant. At one point I think I even thought seriously about being a stand up comedian.
It seems like such a casual thing to ask a kid what they want to be when they grow up, but I think it’s a very serious question, “What are you going to BE?” or “Who do you want to BE?”
It’s a wonderful thing to reinforce confidence and ambition in a child’s mind, but I think that the way I heard the message was more like, “What label can the world put on you?” instead of, “What kind of person do you want to become?”
It’s all in that word. BE. Who do you want to BE? What do you want to BE? I think it makes more sense to finish the sentence, I want to be ______, with characteristics instead of jobs.
Don’t you think if we grew up being taught to focus on what kind of person we wanted to grow up to be then we could grow up to be that person first and then find a cool job. I wish I could go back to that kindergarten circle and hear things like, “I want to be compassionate.” or “I want to be courageous.” or even “I want to be funny.”
I don’t know about you but I know I spent too many years of my young life worrying, even stressing about what I was going to BE. Would I be someone who made a lot of money and made my family proud with my success? And if so, when? Or would I just be someone with a mediocre job that impressed no one?
It hadn’t occurred to me until just recently that I could just BE ME. I could just be the best version of myself and that is enough. I mean obviously I have to be me and then do something with that. I don’t mean you should just be happy sitting on the couch all day everyday as long as you are being a nice person while doing it. I mean to say that you should figure out the youest characteristics of yourself and use those things to BE who you want to be. Dr. Seuss even said, “Today you are you, that is truer than true. There is no one alive that is youer than you.”
We should be teaching kids to be themselves and dream big about becoming the greatest possible version of that person. There are thousands of doctors and teachers and singers and firefighters and that’s all good and great because the world needs all of those things but more than that, the world needs compassionate doctors and courageous firefighters and funny teachers. The world needs more people who actually care about the things that they do for the purpose of making the world better and not just for the purpose of living up to their family’s expectations or their ideal yearly salary.
“For we are God’s masterpiece, created in Christ Jesus to do good works which God prepared in advance for us to do” — Ephesians 2:10
I’m making it a mission to grow up again. I want a do-over because I don’t think I did it right the first time. I want to grow up to be a funny, kind and honorable woman of God who advocates for people who can’t advocate for themselves. I don’t know what career label to put on that quite yet, but I am young enough not to have to worry about it.
I would love it if you would all participate in this exercise with me. In the comments section below, share what you wanted to be when you were a kid and who you actually grew up to be. If given the chance to “grow up again” what would you choose to be now?
