To "BE" or not to "be"

So, what do you want to be when you grow up? This is a trick question.  No one lets you in on the secret and you have to figure it out all by yourself.  I didn’t know this surreptitious fact the first time this question was posed to me, when I was three, and my immediate response was that I wanted to be a pony.  Matter of fact, I just recently have put 2 and 2 together and realized that the “be” part of the question is really “BE”, and the most critical point in those ten little words.  The “grown up” part is one of those things that should be interpreted as a state of mind and not a physical attribute (as difficult as this may seem and isn’t obvious to the curious bystander) and should be applied at the discretion of the user.

Through the years, many people, for sake of conversation I suppose, have inquired about my future state of “being”.  I have been thoughtful in my responses and looking back, have had a wide assortment of occupational choices - with pretty impressive reasoning - that I desired for my destiny.  Some of these answers to the “be” question included: teacher (I liked to play this with my friends in 2nd grade because you got to use a red marker, use all the chalk you wanted and clean the erasers… outside, on the sidewalk); an ENT doctor (this was the one thing I wanted since 6th grade when I got to go to Stanford because I punctured my eardrum and got to meet all these very cool specialists in this area and they wore very, very white medical coats and had stethoscopes); moto-cross racer (I had an older brother who raced, and I wanted to be like him); attorney (I loved the look of the law books in their libraries); truck driver (because you got to sit really high and look down on the cars); marine biologist (doesn’t everyone go through this stage?); and one of my favorites, psychologist (for obvious reasons of analyzing and interpreting all those around me).

Well, I have some redefining news, I misinterpreted the context of the original question, relying on the pure trajectory of the words asked and not what may be hidden beneath such a simple, polite query.  Not all is what it appears, with the “be” part of the request not referring to your choice of financial bread and butter, but rather what kind of person you are going to “BE”.  As we know, jobs come and go, careers sometimes take different paths from what was originally planned and life happens.  What needs to stay consistent is the fact of the person you are constantly striving to become.

Now, as I head into my middle years (okay, well into them), and friends jokingly ask what I want to “BE” when I grow up, I might have to answer healthy, happy and fulfilled.  Which could be a daunting task if I hadn’t figured out the meaning of the “BE” and kept looking in the wrong places to “be” fulfilled.  Needless to say, if you don’t succeed in the “be” department to where you thought you wanted to “be” at this stage in your life, the results can be pretty tragic.  On the other hand, if you know that: a) you will probably never really “grow-up”; and b) there are lots of avenues to achieve “BE”, your rate of success is very high.

Cynthia A. McClelland, curious observer of the obvious with interpretations of the oddities of daily life.  Mother, wife and lover of the furry, resides in the north Lake Tahoe area.                  

Cynthia A. McClelland © 2003-