What Do You Want To Be?

Editorial Assistant Emily Chan interrogates the one question we all have in the back of our minds.

What if I don’t know what I want? It spreads across the dinner table like poison, squeezing between the gentle scrapes of metal forks on ceramic plates, so quiet you wouldn’t have heard it if you weren’t so busy eating, if the conversation hadn’t lulled. There is a change in the air; it stiffens, then stirs, then stiffens again, as if unsure of its place, unsure if it’s taking up too much or not enough room. It’s a question directed at no one and everyone, yet no one knows how to respond. It’s your response to the question you’ve been asked your whole life but never answered—not truthfully, that is.

What do you want to be? There is such a formality to the question, an expectation of certainty placed on you as soon as you are old enough to speak. Certainty in that you are allowed to change, of course, that your answer is allowed to change, but nonetheless certainty in that you must always have an answer. You can’t leave the page blank, the lines reaching forever.

When you are five, your answer comes to you with perhaps the greatest certainty of your life: Fairy! 

When you are seven, watching the gleaming red fire engines speed past, sirens blaring and lights ablaze, your answer is Firefighter. 

When you are ten, sitting in your favourite teacher’s classroom at lunch, your answer is Teacher. Later that year, after hours of weekly practice, when you find out you made it into the state-level swimming competition, you add to your answer, grinning: Olympian. 

When you are fourteen, finding solace in your paints and canvases, guitar strings and lyrics, your answer is tentatively Artist. 

When you are fifteen, sixteen and seventeen, and you have your whole world figured out, you think you know—for certain this time—Lawyer. Or is that what the world figures you’ll be? 

When you are eighteen, sitting down to submit the forms that seem to determine the rest of your life, you finally pause. You finally stop. What are you going to be? They tell you to follow your dreams, making them out to be something easy to find. You start to think there is something wrong with you when you cannot find them. 

You are twenty and halfway through your degree, no title yet but plenty of doubt: full of questions you ask yourself continuously, questions you can’t (or won’t) answer. Are you happy? Is this the passion they told you to turn into your dream job?

You turn over in your bed at night, unable to quiet the worrying and questioning. Why do you have so many damn questions? And worse, none of the answers. 

It’s a full moon and the shadows on your walls are eager to dance with the light, swaying with the breeze, or darting across the room in delight when a car drives by. Even the shadows have their purpose. The thought gnaws at your mind, unable to give you rest until you have an epiphany in the dark hours of night, or until your body is physically unable to resist as sleep drowns you. Whichever comes first. 

You find your head starting to turn, your body rolling over in search of another distraction. Your ears snag on the soft whirring of the dishwasher in the background; your eyes fix on a particularly dark spot on the wall. Only momentarily, because your mind is still not at ease. You’ll be twenty-one soon, with no clear passion, but just this once, you entertain the thought that you don’t need one… 

Is it so bad to not know what you want to be? To be given the possibility of the entire world? To be granted the privilege to get to find out? You have, after all, only lived a fifth (let’s be optimistic here) of your life, the majority of which was decided for you. You are merely a toddler in the world of choices that are yours and yours alone. You are going to mess up, pick the ‘wrong’ choice. You are going to stumble down the path no one else seems to be on, or perhaps follow the crowd until you find your own way. As long as you are moving in some way or another, you are making progress. You are not behind when the only timeline you have to follow is your own.

Just this once, your mind surprisingly calms you and sends you off on a peaceful night’s rest. You can deal with the naggers tomorrow.