What you are is based on who you want to be
“What do you want to be when you grow up?” It’s a cliché question asked to every child by relatives, teachers and peers. It’s a question I personally still get asked a variation of such as, “What do you want to do when you graduate?”
As a child, I would answer the question with the same amount of hesitation I do now. Back then, I’d say I’d like to be a lawyer, or a teacher, or a detective, or a journalist, or one of the countless other occupations I’d portray when playing with my cousins.
However, it was not until recently when I read the preface of Michelle Obama’s new memoir “Becoming” that I stopped to consider the depth to the question. As the former First Lady points out, asking children, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” limits them.
By asking that simple question, one is essentially believing the notion that once grown up, one cannot be anything beyond one’s occupation. As if to suggest that once the dream is reached there is nothing left to be.
Recently, I took part in the Common Reader Program’s Hawk Stories Oral History Day event. Essentially, I was interviewed by a first-year student about how I came to be where I am now in my career.
For the first time in a while, I stopped and thought about everything that has brought me to today. The choices I made. The opportunities I took. The obstacles I navigated around.
On a career level, I’m “what” I am because the extremely shy high school student that I used to be took a risk and signed up for the elective journalism class junior year. What I learned in that class helped launch me into the communication field.
Taking journalism in high school helped affirm what it is I wanted to be. But, as I learn every day, “what” I want to be is only possible because of “who” I want to be.
From the time I was born, my parents have instilled in me a strong work ethic, compassion, dedication and responsibility. Those core values are ones I have always strived to have define who I am.
Currently, I wear many hats including son, friend, student and editor-in-chief. However, those titles make up “what” I am. “Who” I am and strive to always be is a person others can look up to and rely on. A person who goes above and beyond the call of duty, not out of ego, but rather for the betterment of all the “whats” I am.
When I’m asked, “what do you want to do after graduation,” it’s hard to pinpoint one thing that I want to be and do. The amount of dreams and goals I have now, far exceed what I used to think I was restricted to.
No one should feel limited to the “whats” someone is and/or want to be. Further, we shouldn’t, even unknowingly, place a line between what someone wants to be and who they are striving to be.
Lastly, I’ll leave you with this question: “Who do you want to be?”
Also published on Medium.
