When I Grow Up, I’ll Be Happy

posted 18th August 2009    Written by: Kendra    CATEGORY: All Posts, Job/Career/Work, Kendra, Life Lesson, Quarterlife Crisis, Season 1

nogrownups(This week I posed a question to Andrea, Kendra, Robyn & Marisa- When you were small, what did you want to be when you grew up?  How has this played into your life?  And perhaps the more appropriate question for a Quarterlife Crisis: What do you want to be when you grow up? xoxo  Molly)

Adults love to ask little kids what they want to be when they grow up.

It is a strange tendency, if you think about it. Small children can’t even come close to being able to express a clear answer based on skills, interests, temperament and professional knowledge.  Heck, even most adults can’t.

Adults, I think, ask this question for one of two reasons.

The first, and the more insidious, is because in our “success” oriented culture we want kids to start thinking about their futures early. While this has its benefits, it’s also a form of social conditioning that trains us to be still more future focused. We forget early how to embrace the moment and instead keep our eyes on the carrots held by society’s sticks.

The second reason I think adults enjoy asking little kids what they want to be when they grow up is because children often respond with some of the cleverest, funniest, most interesting answers to what we as adults often find a weighted question. 

littlekendraWhen I was a kid I wanted to be (in order from youngest to oldest): a doctor, a lawyer, president of the United States and a superhero. The older I got, oddly enough, the more fantastical my career aspirations became.

I remember fervently praying to god in French class, my sophomore year of high school, for super powers, or at the very least, the ability to create my own bat cave with the necessary technologies. I was a bizarrely spiritual kid with a strong attraction to the mystical side of the Catholic faith in which I was raised.

This is my explanation, fifteen years later, as to how I could possibly believe that God would give me super powers.Faced with transubstantiation and the dead rising, how hard could a little thing like super powers be? I promised to keep them a secret.

I wanted super powers because for as far back as I can remember I was aware of human suffering and desperately wanted to end it. Given the vastness of the situation- environmental degradation, hunger, poverty, war- I quickly realized that it would take super human efforts to fix the problem. And while fifteen years later, I no longer pray to God for superpowers to help me fix the problem, this strong desire to make the world better has played a role in both my career and personal life.

Beyond my graduate school studies in sustainable development and my decision to pursue a career, in part, in environmental policy, I’ve found that I have a difficult time relating to people who don’t seem to recognize the connections between their life choices and the larger problems of the world. My friends and “special friends” all tend to be motivated by more than money or interests, but also by a larger sense of connection to people and the planet.

What does that mean as I face once again the question of who I want to be when I grow up?

Beyond helping to color the kinds of activities I’m willing to engage in, not much. I’m more motivated these days by the sentiment represented in this quote:

“When I was in grade school, they told me to write down what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down happy. They told me I didn’t understand the assignment. I told them they didn’t understand life.”

More than anything, what I want to be when I grow up is happy.

Not the kind of happiness that’s represented in television commercials by an endless parade of smiles, and writhing hips, set to a kicking soundtrack…  Rather, a deeper sense of contentment based on strong connections to loved ones, to my work, and to society as a whole.

This is why I am actively seeking work that I find personally meaningful that also contributes to society and why I am moving home to be closer to family and friends.

kendra-bio1

photocredit: eatbitter

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Comments (8)

8 Responses to “When I Grow Up, I’ll Be Happy”

  • John Says:
    August 18th, 2009 at 10:55 am

    I wanted to be a scientist…and I am! But, in retrospect, that might not have been the best move…

  • Annemarie Says:
    August 18th, 2009 at 11:36 am

    I LOVE that quote. Where’s it from?

  • Kendra Says:
    August 18th, 2009 at 11:44 am

    Annie like far too many great quotes it’s anonymous (or I would have cited it). I like to think of it as wisdom bestowed upon us from the universe that travels in weird ways until it reaches us in our time of greatest need. I learned about it through my friend Liz.

  • Janelle Says:
    August 18th, 2009 at 4:18 pm

    Hmmm… When I was in elementary school I wanted to be a vet during the summer and a teacher during the school year. HA! May the children of the world count themselves lucky! But according to my HS yearbook, I wanted to be an environmental engineer: check! Nevermind I’m not actually a practicing engineer…

  • Kelly Mitton Says:
    August 19th, 2009 at 7:17 am

    Kids come up with the best & most clever answers! I have my little brother on video telling the camera he wants to be a snow plow … not a snow plow driver. The ACTUAL snow plow. Great post Kendra!

  • Laura Bradley Says:
    August 19th, 2009 at 10:41 am

    when I was little I wrote “happynis” as my wish and put it inside my locket. I spelled it wrong, but that doesn’t really matter.

  • matt killian Says:
    August 19th, 2009 at 9:18 pm

    First, Kendra, thank you! Sincerely, I appreciate what have to say, and I can relate to it. You do have a simple complexity that I see both in your writing style and also wrapped in what I am going to call your “observational truths.” These observational truths capture very well this concept that we all know of and typically agree to call “life.” I thoroughly it!

    This is funny to me because I don’t often feel this comfortable to share with the world-wide-web, but it is a good question and I enjoy the comments to so far. Now for my part, I recall saying that I wanted to be ‘He-man.’ And certainly, I didn’t know what that meant beyond wanting to be strong. And likely I didn’t really know what THAT meant. (I think it is the first time I can honestly say that I am showing my age in that hidden truth about me.) I was sure though that I thought “being strong” did mean more that mere muscular strength; however, of course, physical strength was definitely part of it. My dream to be strong definitely included some overall fitness too, such as health, a certain body type, and appearance, again at that age probably not sure what that totally meant; as if I do know. I think also there included a mental capacity to be able to have the patience and creativity in hard times to combat such trying experience or emotional hurt. I also think that I thought “being strong” meant being a better person. I do not recall specifically if I thought actually about being a hero, but perhaps it was there partly. I believe that there was some idea that I wanted to be an active participant and a belonging member to whatever circle I was a part of. And more I wanted to be considered by others as reliable and a source of comfort and strength they could pull from.

    I am referring to myself at about the age of 8 or so, give or take a few years.

    I think that what is deep and important in this question is the reflecting that goes into the impact those “dreams” of little kids had on us over the years; those kids are in us still and the are what we were not too many years ago.

  • Kendra Says:
    August 24th, 2009 at 8:35 am

    Kelly, a snow plow eh? That’s brilliant. I never thought of becoming an inanimate object before.

    Matt, well you ARE strong so at least that part of your childhood wish came true. I think the kids that we were are still very much inside of us and that more adults need to dust off and PLAY more :)

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