Why you should never stop dreaming and be a different person every decade

The benign question posed to almost every child, “What do you want to become?”, is almost an insult when directed at an adult. Life seams to teem with possibilities when the child is learning the ropes of social etiquette and waking up to economic realities, and then, it seems, life has a trick of denying more than offering.

When was the last time somebody asked you, “What do you want to grow up to become?” Or have already grown to your fullest, awaiting the inevitable? Remember: It’s not over till it’s over.

Let’s reflect on the nature of responses to such genuine inquiries: “I want to be a doctor”. “A pilot.” “A businessperson.” “An engineer.” “A politician.” “A cricketer.” Or any of the several professions in vogue. But they are all professions, at any rate. It’s because life’s worth is mostly calibrated in terms of professional, largely external, achievements, and not even a child is immune to that knowledge. Resultingly, when one’s career starts, there’s limited flexibility, strict expectations and foregone conclusions. Most careers are rather straightjacketed, with clear performance parameters and acute threats that “if not you then somebody else.” Any attempt to deviate comes at the cost of reputational loss and, inevitably, financial hardship. Ergo, most employees remain fatalistic, wondering where that child got lost.

The root of the trouble is that we have lost the child within us in the pursuit of becoming a value-adding economic agent. We have pruned our dreams to what makes economic sense, and even our nightmares have been educated in what’s permissible. What if career was a part of your life and not the heart of your life, and that you could grow up to become pretty much anybody?

The immutable truth of human life is mutation. We are changing continuously, sometimes deliberately, but often naturally, and that keeps our species going. While the effects of such mutations are seen over eons, in an opposable thumb or a larger brain, even in a lifetime change is a possibility. If you chose to mutate yourself even in your 40s, you could appear as a different person by your 50s. Suppose you say that over the next ten years, I want to become an accomplished author, it’s very much in the realms of possibility.

Go ahead and imagine your future state and start investing in it. Between you as a child and adult, when do you think you have greater control over your choices? When are you more realistically aware of your truest desires? Of course, as an adult. That’s precisely when people stop imagining. Why not think of your life in decades and be a different person every ten years? Who’s stopping you? Certainly not the child, but instead the overzealous adult, who is more perturbed about people’s opinions and the risk of throwing it all away. Remember: Things are never as good or as bad as they appear. So go ahead, dream again and go about it in a systematic manner. You never know, what’s in store for you.

Pavan Soni is the writer of Design Your Thinking and Design Your Career.

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