What do you want to be when you grow up?

I was hanging out with a 8 year old and a few adults when the question came up: "What do you want to be when you grow up?"

No adult takes the answer seriously, of course.

But this framing that there is a someone that you want to be doesn't disappear. As you grow up, your answers to the question are taken more seriously by the people around you and, most of all, taken more seriously by you. It gets in your head, it becomes a shortcut you use to justify your decisions.

Eventually, it becomes the light at the end of the tunnel, and the path there a blurry series of events that you wade through unthinkingly. You spend time studying for a boring course, setting aside your other interests - all for this "me" you thought you wanted to be. You stop questioning it.

We can't predict how things will turn out, or how our tastes will change. To commit to a path is like committing to live someone else's life. Figuring out what do you with your life is what life is about, so focus on learning how you want to live, not what you want to do.

We should aim to explode the number of branches and paths we can take. How to choose? We choose with our values, we train our tastes, we figure out what we like and don't like, what excites us and what bores us.

Maximize experience and you'll learn that what you want to do and be will be many different things at different times. And that is ok.