Vitality Stories
Who me?!
“You rarely have time for everything you want in this life, so you need to make choices. And hopefully your choices can come from a deep sense of who you are.” ~ Fred Rogers
What do you want to be when you grow up is an old question, but it was on my mind last week when a few experiences converged in a single day.
It started with watching, Mister Rogers & Me. It hadn’t occurred to me that Fred Rogers created a role that didn’t previously exist, and as a result, he earned the legacy as America’s most beloved neighbor. A simple question sparked his drive to work in television: Why wasn’t there a show where people didn’t demean each other? He was determined to “give an expression of care every day to each child.”
Later that same day, I read a survey by LinkedIn showing only 30% of adults are working their dream job. When I finished, I formatted my interview with artist Michael Michaud who never doubted he’d be anything but an artist and who recognized his passion and purpose at an early age. Then I reviewed the Top 5 Regrets of Dying by Bronnie Ware and learned the top two are 1-unfullfilled dreams, and 2-working too hard. Finally, just in time to lift my spirits, a friend’s daughter, Sophia, shared her drawing of Scuttle from The Little Mermaid:
My first thought was, I hope she keeps drawing. My second was, What does she want to be when she grows up? But then I remembered how I panicked the first time someone asked me this same question years ago.
It was 1978 and Mrs. Pollock was hosting a career day in our third grade class. A fireman and a nurse joined my teacher and in unison they asked, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” My desk was at the back of the room so I had some time to consider. As classmates yelled out,
Nurse!
Teacher!
Astronaut!
Police Man!
Doctor!
I thought, No. Nope. Not me. No way. Ew.
To be honest, at eight years old I had a much better understanding of what I DIDN’T want to be when I grew up and that included a criminal, a druggie, a person with tattoos*, or a fire hydrant (not necessarily in that order). And as far as choosing what to be, well, I wanted to know all of my choices.
When I went home that day, I asked my dad to tell me about different jobs. He was a garbage man, but hadn’t always been one. He’d once been an entrepreneur and owned a sewage service business, “Lil Stinker.” He was always full of…IDEAS, so I knew he’d have some for me. It was as if he’d been waiting for someone to ask him this very question because with great animation he said,
- Female Barber – “Men tip pretty ladies.”
- A Mortician – “You’ll always have a job.”
- A ‘Computer Person’ — “Computers are the future!”
Ultimately, Dad told me I had time to think about it. Whew!
So asking Sophia what she wanted to be when she grew up was not a good idea. And recommending she be an artist seemed obsolete since she already is one. Instead, I went after seasoned veterans—my friends on social media—a healthy mix of Baby Boomers, Gen X, and Millennials, and I asked them, “When you were a child, what did you think you would be when you grew up?”
And the survey says…
Here are just a few of the responses I received:
When I was a kid, my grandmother took me to a really unique home. I was super interested in it so she bought me a bunch of house design magazines. I started designing my first homes when I was seven…I’ve been in the field for the last 23 years. I owe it all to her.
~
I wanted to be Crystal Gayle. Then I wanted to marry Michael Jackson. Then I wanted to make advertising commercials. The last one stuck.
~
I wanted to be a veterinarian that had a private jet that flew from farm to farm to cure cows. I also wanted to marry a black lab. (Note: she’s a young adult author today)
~
When I was about three, I was dead set on wanting to be a ‘bergere’—a person who watches over sheep…Around thirteen, I wanted to become a doctor and cure cancer, but I didn’t go to medical school because it would have meant staying in my hometown…I headed to Paris, found the closest university program to medical school…I ended up doing what I wanted—with three filings approved by the FDA.
What? What?
The number of resources and mediums available to a person wanting to know WHAT does and WHAT doesn’t work in finding passion and creating a dream job is mind-boggling. Earlier this year, I shared Recalibrating Rachel, which includes two links to a liberating article by Dan Blank at We Grow Media called “On Risk in Writing,” and his interview with Rachel Fershleiser–a member of Tumblr’s outreach team. In my opinion, both the article and interview will appeal to anyone–not just writers–confronting change and taking a risk to follow their passion. Dan and Rachel are role models of being yourself and whistling while you work.
My informal survey is obviously biased so other than my own gratification in learning more about my friends, it’s unnecessary to share What worked for each of them in pursuit of their dream jobs (unless they want to write a guest blog and share their experience–HINT). Maybe there isn’t one approach that works for all people, philosophies, cultures, or disciplines. If you add family generations to the mix…well, each one wants to impart their lessons, career experiences, and hindsight to the next, all but certain they are giving a boost and the means to their progeny to achieve a fulfilling life.
There’s a great scene in Everbody’s Fine where Robert De Niro’s character, Frank Goode, who spent his life PVC coating telephone wires, asks his young son, David, what he wants to be when he grows up.
Frank: What are you going to DO when you grow up?
David: I want do be a painter and do my pictures.
Frank: No, not a painter. Painters paint walls, and dogs pee on walls. You’re going to be an artist.
But if he could rewind the clock and do it again, Frank would have it go like this:
David: I’ve been thinking about what I want to do when I grow up?
Frank: Yeah? And what did you decide?
David: I might still be an artist, but I might just do a normal job. Like a painter.
David: Really?
Frank: Really.
Frank learns that despite his years of toil, sweat, and good intentions, his kids have to find their own ways; blaze their own trails; live their own lives—and that includes career choices. Frank can share his work/life experience, but he can’t give them his experience.
Who are you?
Lorraine Watson, author of Follow Your Light, is all about supporting people to “show up and shine their true self.” I asked her how she felt about the question, What do you want to be when you grow up? Lorraine encourages her readers to
…move past the doing and roles and look at who you are. It doesn’t matter what you do as long as you’re infusing yourself into everything you do. There are a few directions you’ll lean towards, but there isn’t ‘one’ thing.
Lorraine’s sentiments echo what I’m hearing from my parenting friends. I guess today, some schools no longer ask children what they want to be when they grow up. They focus more on emotional evolution or hackschooling by pursuing interests that pique and fuel the student’s curiosity. It’s a tailor made curriculum.
The questions de rigeur for adults to ask children are,
WHO do you want to be when you grow up?
WHO are you?
Not long ago, my brother asked his granddaughter what she wanted to be when she grows up, and Kyra responded, “Myself.”
Good answer, Kyra. You’re already succeeding.
Question, shape, craft
A few days ago, the President of Bennington College, Dr. Mariko Silver, hosted an orientation for the families of active students. I was curious because William, the first recipient of the Tiger Drive Scholarship, just started his first year of college. I was pleasantly surprised to hear Dr. Silver describe an education plan that teaches students how to question, shape, and craft an idea and then take it out into the world. Students are encouraged to take classes outside their comfort zones, to test their boundaries and see what truly sparks their interest. She says,
“Because on some level a major is neither here nor there for the rest of his/her life…Your children are too smart and too curious to be confined as something as square as a major. Instead the plan is to help them find areas of study through the questions that drive them.”
“Education [experience] is not something you get. It’s not something somebody else gives you. It’s something you create. You make it and therefore earn it. You earn it by doing. You earn it by pushing. You earn it by trying, failing, getting up, and trying again…It’s imagining possibilities and then pursuing them.”
What I learned
I had a self-doubt-freak-out while I was writing this newsletter because I couldn’t clearly answer, for myself, what’s my driving question? Fred Rogers had one. Other people know theirs. Why am I compelled to write the specific memoirs, novels, children’s books, and newsletters I write? Do my topics reflect WHO I want to be?
And then I picked up a book I started reading a few months ago by Nancy J. Nordenson, Finding Livelihood: A Progress of Work and Leisure, where she shares up front what the books is and is not about:
This is not a book for the young girl at the table doing her homework and dreaming of the future. It is a book for when the future has arrived. It is not about choosing a career path but about making your way on a path that you have either chosen or been given.
And,
This book…adds not just another way of thinking about the experience of work but another voice, a meditative and contemplative voice, a voice trying to speak into the tension between passion and need, between aspiration and limits, between the planned life and the given life.
Needless to say, this book was what the freak-out doctor ordered. I finished reading it right then and there. Slowly and soothingly thanks to Nancy’s lyrical prose, I started finding my livelihood, a lovely space where the threads of all my experiences, relationships, and philosophies wove together, and I asked myself again, What is the driving question behind my writing choices and do my choices reflect who I want to be? And here is where I gently landed.
My driving question—my spark—is: What can I do to show someone he, or she isn’t isolated by his, or her feelings and experiences?
I can listen. I can interview people. I can write memoirs for the elderly. I can continue to write novels about flawed characters with real and common issues. I can share each one. And somewhere out there, perhaps there will be one person who relates, and can cry, smile, roll their eyes, or laugh, and say “That’s how I feel sometimes.” or “That happened to me, too.”.
Readers, thank you for giving me time to share my experience, and if you’d like to share yours, I’m all ears.
Your work, experiences, choices, questions and sparks are all part of the journey to being you.
*Re: tattoos – no offense intended. It was the late 1970s and I was 8 years old.