Want To Do or Want To Be? (A bigger question than To Be or Not To Be)

I remember my primary school class. The teacher asked the kids what they wanted to be when they grew up. And if anyone kept a tab, most of the class wanted to be doctors, engineers, pilots, IAS officers. There was also a smattering of train motormen and occasional policemen. I am sure most of you got a sense of déjà vu.

Don’t schools, parents and indeed the society at large expect you to become SOMEBODY? From the time a baby starts taking tiny steps it is confronted with this profound question which more often than not haunts the children till late into their adulthood. There is an insatiable curiosity or even pressure on the child to be SOMEBODY. A child’s impressionable mind then gets hooked onto this continuous struggle to be somebody.

It really got me thinking. Shouldn’t the question rather be, ‘what do you want to do when you grow up?’ Some may wonder what the difference is. Some might just say we become doctors or  engineers or  pilots so that we can earn loads of money, buy a house, a car or a fleet of cars, go on expensive holidays, wear expensive Swiss watches, designer clothes and generally live a good life. So why is the fuss?

I see it little differently. Take a pilot for example. You would love to learn to fly. Because, you may want to fly as a hobby, or to see the world, or to serve your country  or rescue people in distress. Or all of this together. Similarly, you may want to fly a hot air balloon, a paraglide, a micro lite plane, a big commercial airliner, a chopper or a single sitter supersonic fighter plane. So, becoming a pilot is just a means to help you fulfil your dream.

Sometimes we may just copy wanting to be ‘SOMEBODY’ because half the class wants to be that ‘SOMEBODY’. Don’t we all fall into this trap that is laid for us right from our primary schools? This urge or a compulsion of wanting to be SOMEBODY stays with us through our career. Is the young fellow happy after he becomes a doctor or an engineer ? Not really. The young doctor may then want to be the dean of the hospital where he works and the rookie engineer wants to be the CEO of his firm. Treating the patients or building the bridges (at least that’s what we thought when we were in school. All the engineers did, was built bridges) then just becomes means to an end rather than the other way around.

Now take a look at the folks who are generally famous around the world. (Not that less famous people don’t imbue similar qualities, it’s just easier to illustrate the point using names of the big guns). Marco Polo and Ibn Batuta trekked half the Earth because they were curious to see what this world had to offer.  Columbus set the sail westwards because he wanted to go to East and prove that the world is round. Alexander Fleming wanted to discover a microbe that killed bacteria that killed people. And his namesake Graham Bell wanted to invent a contraption that allowed people separated over a long distance to communicate. How can we miss the earliest Alexander? Yes,  certain Alexander the Great who wanted to conquer the world? Mother Teresa and Baba Amte wanted to shelter and provide dignified life to the desolate. History books are replete with the stories of stellar work of such giants. As a fact of matter humankind would not be same without these great souls across the myriad fields from Science, Technology, Arts, Literature, and indeed Humanities.  

I wonder if Alexander the Great wanted to be the biggest emperor so he can rule the world and Mother Teresa wanted to be a saint so that she could care for people. As far as I know she was bestowed sainthood long after she was gone. Neither did the other great Alexanders wait till they were anointed as the Chief Communications Officer or the Chief Scientist before they invented a telephone and Penicillin respectively. 

So how come all of us, rest of the lesser mortals, wait till we become SOMEBODY to do what we always wanted to do? Look around and you will find the corporate world littered with people who are stressed because they have been waiting to become somebody. The so called stress is then a self inflicted pain. I am stressed because I became Executive Principal Vice President (EPVP) instead of Senior Executive Principal Vice President (SEPVP) or did not become eligible for that larger cabin or did not become head of South East Asia and Papua New Guinea. 

Would you rather not pursue your passion to fly, to travel, to cook, to cure people of their ailments and yes to build those bridges?  Don’t you want to do things you always wanted to do?

(The pronouns he and his are used as gender neutral and also mean she or her)

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