Here's a hard question.

When you were young, grown ups would always ask you this.

"What do you wanna be when you grow up?"

And the answer was always really easy.

"I wanna be a doctor" (/lawyer/dentist/teacher)

or

" I wanna be a ballerina" (/actor/singer..for the more creative ones)

I'm sure many of you had different ambitions and aspirations when you were young, as did I.
The world was your playground and you could be anything you wanted to be.

But who knew..we'd suddenly turn the rightful age of "grown up", where we really did have to decide what we wanted to be.
When the question "what do you wanna be when you grow up" was suddenly the most valid, most important question in the world.
When you suddenly realize you aren't a kid anymore and when someone asks you that question, you aren't supposed to give them your default answers - doctor,lawyer,ballerina - but provide them with a serious, logical answer.
Has it gotten harder to decide when we've actually GROWN up?


Some people were just born to do things.
Piano prodigy, goes to a music school and eventually becomes world famous pianist.
Naturally talented in painting, goes to art school becomes well known painter.
Picks up golf at the age of 3, becomes Worlds' No.1 Golfer.

Then there are some people who had always known what they were gonna do. Who always gave the truest answers growing up. "I wanna be a doctor" went to med school, became a doctor.


My question is, what do the rest of us do?
How do we know what we wanna be when we grow up?

I wanna be in Australia, Australia is always looking for accountants. I'm gonna be an accountant.
I'm good at math , so I'm gonna be an engineer.
Does that really answer the question of what you want to be when you grow up?
Is this how we determine what we want to be and what we want to do for the rest of our lives?

Say...I ask you the question "What are you studying?", and you answer "law".
Is that the same question as "What do you wanna be when you grow up?"
Does that mean you want to be a lawyer when you grow up?

I don't think so. I think the 2 questions are completely different.
Maybe I wanna be a hair dresser, but I'm studying Accountancy.
Maybe I secretly wanna be a model, but I'm studying Computer Graphics.
Maybe I'm studying Business Administration, but honestly, I don't think I can work in this line.

Do we listen to our parents?
Sorry. Wrong answer.
You can't say "I wanna be an architect" when you have no real desire to be an architect.
You could probably say " My parents say I'm gonna be an architect"
So lets say you do that. You listen to your parents. You become an architect.
Does that mean you go through your entire life not knowing what you wanted to be when you grew up?

Don't get me wrong. None of the above are the "wrong ways" of deciding what you want to do.

40 years ago, if you had the grades, you'd become a doctor/engineer/lawyer. Nothing wrong with that, whoever did, is probably doing very well now and has a more than comfortable life.

But is there such a thing as establishing a ground between what we want to do and what we do become? Or is that secretly taboo?

Are we supposed to listen to our parents? Are we supposed to stick with what you're good at? Are you supposed to look at the situation around you and decide based on that?

If you do listen to your parents, will you regret not doing what you wanted to next time?
If you do stick with what you're good at, does that mean you aren't willing to explore different things that you could do/step our of your comfort zone?
If you base your decisions on the situation you're in , does that mean you're limiting yourself?

So here's the hard question,
What do you want to be when you grow up?