What Do You Want to Be When You're Older?

by Zoe Dukoff-Gordon

 

 

This question is one which has been floating around society for generations. I’m sure any child or student you speak to will have been asked this by parents, aunties, uncles, friends, teachers. I asked my five year old niece what she wanted to be and she replied ‘a ballerina’. Her six year old brother wants to be a footballer, my neighbour who is eleven wants to do something with horses and her fourteen year old sister wants to be an artist.

 

Yet once you get to sixteen or seventeen you have to start really thinking about it as you choose A levels, universities, university courses and start to think about your future career. Some people may consider certain areas or aspects to help them decide: what subjects they like, what interests them, whether they have a talent in that area.

 

However, in this day and age, other things people start to consider are money and competition. We hear people saying, particularly in school, ‘I’d like to be an actor but it’s very competitive’ or ‘I’m interested in childcare but it doesn’t pay well’.

 

But what if money didn’t matter? What would you really like to do?


I’m not saying we should all quit our jobs and drop out of school to go travelling, but should we base our decisions of what we’ll spend the majority of our lives doing on money or an element of rivalry? Obviously both components need to be factors of any decision, but should they carry most of the weight?

‘And after all if you do really like what you’re doing, it doesn’t matter what it is, you can eventually become a master of it’. – Alan Watts.