Most of us have been asked, at some point in our lives, “What do you want to do, or who do you want to be, when you grow up?” Innocent enough question, right? Surprising as it might be, this one question can put pressure on a child that will plague him the rest of his life. How can we really know anymore?

The following is a funny little history lesson I wrote this morning for your amusement (Jan enjoyed it!). The times and events are lacking accuracy but, if this doesn’t put a smile on your face, a chuckle in your spirit and a question or two in your mind, I’ll go back to snorkeling on Virgin Gorda where I was yesterday. It was heaven.

Pre-Moneyist Erectus Era

A long, long time ago, most of the activities we spent our time on were connected to survival. We needed food, shelter, protection, herbs for medicine, and I suppose we needed a little human connection and some down time even way back then.

We spent our time hunting, gathering, picking berries, cooking, defending our mates, making sure the little ones weren’t eaten by the ever present saber-tooth tiger and oh, if we had enough energy as the sun went down, perhaps we’d paint a picture of our lives with a colored rock on a rock of another color.

We’d also sit around (on the dirt, in a cave, and eventually a fire) and tell stories to the youngsters…passing down the hows and whats of survival in the tundra or desert or wherever…maybe even sharing a joke or two.

Every thing we did had a purpose because, if we didn’t do those things, we were dead. And what good was that in the whole survival of the fittest scheme of things?

Life wasn’t hard because that’s all we knew. There were no computers to calculate the sunset or give us the tide chart for the next 12 months or figure out our estimated cost of goods for the next 10 years. We simply had stuff to do!

And as I said, that stuff often made the difference between whether we survived or not. To heck with whether we survived in the biggest cave or had the prettiest pot. We were just happy to have a cave and a pot to…call our own.

We didn’t have time to ask the absurd questions, “Am I really enjoying what I’m doing?” or “Is this line of work bringing me satisfaction and joy?” Forget joy…we were just trying to stay alive.

Financial Erectus Era

During the next hundreds of thousands of years, before there was this thing called Money, we traded, or bartered, for what we needed. If I had a skill that you didn’t have, and you grew oranges, then I could do that thing for you and you could ‘pay me’ in oranges. Life was good. (I like oranges.)

But what if there were something I needed done that no one around was able to do? Or what if I needed something done but I didn’t have any more oranges to trade for having it done? What then?

Well…someone with half a brain might have seen the ‘opportunity’, quickly learned how to do that thing or make that thing, and the gap was covered. This opportunistic person probably didn’t question whether he liked the activity or it gave him purpose. Again, he was probably doing it to survive, feed his family of 13 kids, keep the roof from blowing off the house and keep the cow fed so it would produce enough milk to feed all those kids.

He was grateful to have found a place for himself in the Supply and Demand Cog and again, life was good. It might have been hard, but in the scheme of things, it was good nevertheless.

About this time, people started noticing that other people wanted items or services that weren’t necessarily necessary for life. They just wanted them. They were extras…luxuries in a lot of ways.

Homo-Entrepreneureth Erectus

This is when a new breed of human beings really started to take note. They started noticing that, “If I build it, they will buy it!”

And they did.

This is where things probably started to get sticky. This is where we started placing ‘value’ on stuff, be it a thing or someone’s time and energy. This is where we had to find a substance to trade for this extra stuff that we wanted, and this substance ended up being called Money.

And this is where I suspect we started valuing one person’s skills more than another and, hence, putting them in classifications with respect to what they ‘did’ in the world.

It’s probably when we started meeting people and asking the benign, but underhandedly curious, question…

“So…what to YOU do?”

Secretly, we’re trying to figure out where we should place them on the continuum between NOT successful or rich (or having no possible potential to be rich) on one side and MADE IT status or extremely rich (or having tons of potential to be rich in the future) on the other side.

It’s as if that person IS what they DO. But we’re not what we DO. We’re WHO we are BEING.

Somewhere during this time, enough human societies started to have this thing called Leisure Time and I think that’s where the trouble really started.

People started to question what they were DOING, instead of who they were BEING. They had enough time to contemplate their chosen survival activity.

They started to notice that there were actually human beings who were DOING better things…things that brought those people happiness and joy and a sense of purpose beyond survival.

They started to say, “I want what THEY have!” (Ah, maybe the neighbor’s last name was Jones!)

Questioneth Preemptacus Era

Fast forward to, oh, let’s say the last 100 years or so. From everything we read or hear, it appears that a large percentage of human beings live their lives miserably, BEING what they’re DOING for a living (i.e., surviving) yet despising every moment.

We could (and often do) say they are wasting the time of their lives DOING something they hate (still not questioning much, if at all, who they are BEING)…all because now we’ve introduced this BIG CHOICE into human consciousness between enjoying what we do to survive or, heaven forbid, having to find some altruistic purpose in what we DO. (More on that at another time.)

Existentialist Comtemplatith Adnausiumeth Era

By now, you’re probably asking, What the heck is she talking about here and where is she going with it? Let me tell you…

I have a son who I adore, just like you adore your sons and daughters. He’s 26, working full time in what he studied in college and, like many of our adult children (and their parents), he is struggling with that particular career path he chose.

He’s bored and hates doing what he’s doing for a living and I’m doing my best to coach him to find a way to provide for his survival while finding some joy or happiness or purpose in his work.

This got me to thinking the thoughts I’ve had over and over before about how we didn’t used to (or so it seemed) have this HUGE need to make sure we had joy and happiness and purpose in our work. Or have we always had it?

Have men and women always secretly despised what they had to do for survival? Have people cursed their bosses (and owners and kings and queens) under their breath, secretly wishing they could go out into the world and live lives filled with purpose, connection and joy?

I think so.

But how do I help my son see that, as a society, we’ve made this whole thing up? He told me last night that he’s torn between watching his father with his Hewlett-Packard golden handcuff job and seeing me, his mother, spend her life doing things she adores, that fill her life with passion and purpose…and having a lot more fun that his father seems to have. But I do know that’s subjective.

What I know is that kids these days are torn. Torn between doing a job just for survival and doing something that brings them a whole lot more.

You may be reading this and thinking to yourself, “Yup, I totally get it. I don’t like what I do but I have to do it to survive.”

NO YOU DON’T! You can do anything you want. And that’s what I’m attempting to show my son.

I believe it’s BELIEFS about what our lives should look like as adults that drive us to this…and those beliefs are often fear-based. I believe we instill those beliefs in our children at a very young age by what we say in front of them, what we tell them and by what we do with our own lives.

I believe that if our children saw US living our dreams, we’d empower them to live theirs.

Only problem is that most of us have no idea how to live our dreams. We have no idea that we’re living in a self-created Fahrenheit 451 of our own (thanks Ray). And until we realize, as adults, that we really don’t have to do the things we hate (unless we choose to do them to survive which is perfectly OK), we can craft our lives the way we want.

If you’re in one of those spaces where you’re not happy, I can hear you saying, “Ya, right. She doesn’t have a clue that MY life is different.”

But for those of us who live in parts of the world where we have choice, we do have opportunities that we don’t see, opportunities we don’t take, opportunities that get placed at our feet every day that we walk around because, well, the idea of actually DOING those things scare us to death.

You see, sometimes it’s easier to be miserable…to not have what we say we want. It can be a lot of work to craft the life you really want.

The only question you need to ask yourself is, “Is it worth the effort, MY effort?”

For me, the answer is always YES. For my son, I’ll continue coaching him as long as he allows me the privilege. It’s an honor to have him look to me for help and I never take that honor lightly.

So please, look at the example you’re setting for the youngsters around you. Pay attention to your children’s moods and angst when it comes to their job/career choices. Be vulnerable and share your own fears, concerns, dreams and desires.

Maybe if we’re all up-front about the elephant in the room, we can befriend him, put a pink polka-dot dress on him and dance our lives away with him.

Enjoy…

Btw, I’m going back to the heavenly snorkeling place anyway!