There is a video circulating online from the movie The Boy, The Mole, The Fox, and The Horse. In it, a mole asks a boy, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”
The boy responds with one word: kind.
When you are at the ripe age of 10, you may be routinely asked what you want to be when you grow up. The expected answers are career based. Doctor, teacher, scientist, veterinarian. It’s funny. The question itself doesn’t ask for your dream occupation, it asks specifically what you want to be. I love how literal the answer “kind” is. It slaps you back into the reality of what’s most important.
When I was asked this question as a perky elementary school student, I gave a well thought out answer of “artist and author.” I have fulfilled both dreams as a young adult.
When I ask myself this now, I don’t know what to answer anymore. Sure, I have the scripted response of what my plans are after my undergrad, but what I want to be already seems accomplished. I am grown up already! Sometimes it feels like I ran out of life achievements to be proud of.
But maybe what I want to be is just as simple as a child. Maybe I want to be a wife, a mother, a writer, and kind. The dream occupation will find itself as I find myself.
And I’m not quite “grown up” just yet. 22 years old is just scratching the surface of life.
Isabelle Justice 