Forget your age for a moment. Tell me, what did you want to be before everyone else started telling you what to want?
“The child is father of the man.”
William Wordsworth
When I was in middle school, I was what teachers called a “troublemaker.” You know the type – cracking jokes, starting conversations, making the class laugh at the wrong moments. In my school, teachers had an interesting strategy, they’d make the most disruptive kids class monitors. Give them some responsibility, keep them in line.
Instead of being the class monitor, I chose to manage the quote board. For two years, I showed up early each morning to write a new thought of the day. While other “troublemakers” were keeping their former partners-in-crime quiet, I was searching for words that might make someone think, smile, or see things differently.
20 years later, I still read a quote every morning. That kid who loved sharing daily wisdom? He grew up to run a blog for fun about philosophy. Some things evolve in ways we don’t expect.
Even though I knew from the very start that blogging in general is dead and it’s hard to make it full-time when there is about 600 million blogs out there.
But other dreams stay remarkably constant. I still dream of becoming a pilot. Of starting a YouTube channel of which I had like 6 already. Maybe “Childish”, maybe “Impractical.”
I believe our childhood dreams matter because they show us who we really are. Before rent payments and responsibilities shaped our choices. Before we learned to want what society told us to want.
Yes, we need to pay our bills. Feed our families. Handle our responsibilities. But once those basics are covered? Maybe it’s time to think about those childhood dreams once again.
These dreams don’t have to be all or nothing. Maybe you write your novel on weekend mornings before the kids wake up. Maybe you take dance classes after work. Maybe you finally start that YouTube channel, even if only your mom watches at first.
These weren’t just dreams for many of us. They were glimpses of who we wanted to become before the world told us who we should be.
So tell me, what did you want to be before everyone else started telling you what to want?
