What you want to be when you grow up?
A question we all faced during our childhood and later on. With shame, hurry, guilt or shyness, almost every time we gave a different answer. „I don’t know” was forbidden, we wanted to make the adults proud. We said we wanted to be: policemen, astronauts, presidents or doctors to satisfy and reassure our parents that we are going to be “successful” even if we are 5 and still have no clue how to tie our shoes. Sometimes we would make them laugh by being honest about our future plans: I want to be a princess, a guest, a truck driver or in my case, a sniper. As we become “grown-ups” we still have no clue how to answer this infernal inquiry.
This question says so much about our culture; about the way we teach the little ones to frame reality; about how we unconsciously impregnate early in this way their sense of identity. Firstly, we ask “what” instead of “who”; as in: what category, object you desire to be in the future.? And so it starts.
Crrrack!
The first fracture of our reality.
The prime degree of separateness.
The game commences…
The stories start to entangle…
I am this… You are that…
Children are the seeds of our future. I long wait for the day when instead of different status or professions they will say: I want to be love, kindness, wisdom, peace… I crave the moment when we will stop asking them to be something or someone, and allow them to flourish in their own uniqueness…
I long away for the moment when we would not have to be someone… do something, and we could just be…
With love,
Alexandra
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