"What do you want to be when you grow up?"
"An engineer," my parents answered for me.
"A teacher," still my parenrs, a few years later.
"An accountant," someday when my teacher discovered my potential with mathematics.
In truth, I never knew what I wanted. I changed dreams as often as you can imagine. They told me I could be something, so I said I wanted to be that something. But actually, what do I want?
It's a rhetorical question at the back of my mind. Math is easy, maybe I'll be an accountant. I could teach well, maybe I'd be a great teacher. I love reading, maybe I'll try writing. I could write well, maybe I'll just be an author. Programming looks interesting, maybe I'll do that instead?
I had so many interests; Anything I set my interests to, I can learn easily. But what do I do with all these knowledge? Info-dump to my friends? Randomly drop trivias that no one asked for? Excitedly ramble on when someone mentioned something I knew?
What dreams do I have? What future to I want? What are the things I desire? Maybe I'll look into other people's answers, and I'll pick one that's noble enough, or what seems the coolest. I'll use my writing skills and add some motivations behind it. A drop of past sentiments that will cement the reasoning. Maybe a bit of my real thoughts. Then I could say I dream to be anything, anything that fits the most with the current situation.
Right now, I want to be a Criminal Psychologist. It seems cool: Creating a criminal profile is challenging; Analyzing real people would be interesting. It sounds unique ebough; There's nothing like it in the country I came from. I could use it as subject to my writing.
What do you want to be when you grow up? Do I really have to be something when I grow up? If so, then maybe I'll just be whatever I am in the future. If I become an engineer, then I wanted to be an engineer. If I become a teacher, then I wanted to be a teacher. If I become a Criminal Psychologist, then I wanted to be a Criminal Psychologist. I'll just want to be whatever I become to be; I'd romanticize it to think that I've always dreamt of what I had become. That way, I can say I became what I wanted to be when I grew up.