My daughter dreams of becoming a famous singer or to help the poor. One or the other – or preferably both. My son wants to get rich selling swings. Each have their own way and their own dreams.
A few days ago I saw this cartoon drawing of two children, sitting on the floor playing. One asks the other: “What do you want to be when you give up?” (Link to the cartoon can be found here). Funny but also sad I thought. Is that what we do? Give up on our dreams and settle for something we think would be best for us?
I have recently realized that I think too much of what I think that others expect of me. I have since I was very young and I know now that it has influenced many of the choices I have made since then. I don’t think that I am alone thinking like that and that most of us put too much emphasis on what we think others think we should do with our lives. What we think is prestigious, acceptable, profitable and so on.
That is so great about children. They don’t think like that. They think about what they would like to do, what would be fun to do as well as interesting. They don’t think about if it is a profitable profession, a prestigious one or what others think if they went that way.
But somewhere down the line, that changes and they start to think about all those things. How sad! Don’t you think?
The funny thing is that today I believe that you should absolutely do what you find interesting and what makes you happy. If you do that, I believe that everything else will fall into order as well. If you do that you can turn that thing you love into something prestigious, acceptable or profitable, but it won’t really matter 🙂
I hope that my children will keep dreaming and don’t let anything or anyone put a damper on those dreams. I hope that they will follow those dreams and that it won’t take them 36 years, like their mother, to realize that the sky is the limit!
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