As children we are set up for disappointment

When I was a child there frequently came the question “what do you want to be when you grow up?” I was only in primary school but the conversation began there. This is also where the seed of hope was planted that would eventually rot, lifeless, instead of growing into a healthy plant.

I am sure I am not the only one – we all get asked what we want to do when we are older, what job we want even though we are still learning how to string together a sentence on a page properly. This is where our downfall began. This is where we got built up into thinking we are better than we are and our expectations were raised so high that we ended up teetering on the brink of falling off the high precipice in our twenties. Most of us fall, some from a greater height than others, some with less grace than others. Some of us landed on our feet after we fell but the others broke their legs and slipped into despair, unable to stand again.

I think back to when we I was mislead by the adults around me into thinking I could be anything I wanted to be. I thought there was plenty of choice for what paths we could take going through highschool and out into further schooling, training or employment. What I didn’t realize at the time, however, is that many of these said pathways were blocked off from my access. No matter how much I wanted to go a particular direction, it didn’t make a difference if the path was blocked. No matter how hard I tried to take a particular path, it wouldn’t matter if that path was already full and could take no more people on it. I now realize there was only an illusion of choice. I could merely work with what I had available to me. We all were forced to look at our dwindling options and pick the one that would make us the least unhappy.

You see, when someone asked us “what do you want to be when you grow up?” our response was followed up with “you can be anything you want to be”. Unfortunately as children we believed this so easily. Of course we would believe our parents, teachers, aunties and uncles who told us that anything was possible so long as we put our minds to it. Were they aware that they were slowly deceiving us as we took this statement to build up our idea of what the world as an adult was like?

We are set up for bitter disappointment by those we trust most as children and it doesn’t stop there. In my teenage years they stopped asking what I wanted to be and told me what they thought I should be. They tried to make my decision on my behalf. Did they not realize that if I took this path and found out the trail was actually a chasm missing a bridge that I would blame them for my misfortune?

Through casual conversations we are mislead by our peers and family members. In my twenties they stopped telling me what I should be and started asking when I would get married, not if I would get married. They began asking when I would have kids, not if I would, despite me continuously expressing that I did not want children. There is always an illusion of choice. If we really pay attention to people’s words we will notice that they are heavy with that person’s expectations of us to follow the same path they took, to reach the same milestones they reached.

I now know that I can’t work in a museum just because I studied history. I can’t be an author with my paperbacks for sale in a bookstore just because I write on Vocal. I can’t be a netballer if I have a malformed spine. I can’t be an artist when I don’t have the money to buy supplies. Someone has to work as a cleaner. Someone has to be the cashier at a supermarket or a fast food restaurant. Someone has to pack boxes at a warehouse. Someone has to drive that delivery truck. If we are all built up as children to have grand aspirations and unrealistic expectations of what we can achieve then a lot of us are going to end up feeling like failures caught in a pool of anguish, the dark waters threatening to overcome us.

I wish someone had warned me of what was ahead. I wish someone had made it clear to me that not having a full-time job did not mean I was pathetic, or that choosing not to have children was a valid choice. I wish someone had told me that being a waitress was a fine way to make a living. If we are all trying to climb the social or financial ladder, someone always has to be at the bottom but we don’t realise this when we are encouraged to dream big as children. I encourage everyone to have aspirations and dreams, but a healthy dose of realism and caution is warranted.

When you are talking to your students, nieces, nephews or children, you need to be careful of what kind of world you lead them to believe is awaiting them. It is a fine line to give enough hope to drive them forward without building them up too high only to come crashing down.