What do you want to be when you grow up?

I think the most asked question to young children is What do you want to be when you grow up? Every time a child meets someone new, their own age or older, they ask the question. Something I've noticed recently is that young children always have an answer to that question. I don't think I've ever heard a child under the age of about 11 reply with "I don't know" (and I've known a lot of young children as my mum has been childminding since I was 4).

But when someone asks ME that question now, at the age of 20, I have no blooming idea how to answer.

Children tend to get asked "What do you want to BE?" and they can list of a million characters that they want to embody; fireman, vet, doctor, teacher...the list is really and truly endless. And they don't second guess their own answer, they say the exact thing that they want to be when they grow up and they don't consider for a split second that anything or anyone would try and deter them or get in their way.

However, we as young adults seem to get asked "What do you want to DO?". We can't just give the name of a type of person we want to emulate in our career path. We have to stop and we have to think about the things we want to DO when we are older.

DOING and BEING are horribly different. I remember first being aware of this when I began learning secondary school French when I was 11 and we had to learn verbs and put them with être (to be) or faire (to do) and I'd sit there trying to process whether I do or be the verbs.

But honestly, they are very different. Being someone is just being that person, you are that person, that's who you are. Doing something entails a process, usually a personal one; doing things is effort and work.

I miss when I used to just have to decide what I wanted to be. Because I can easily tell you a million things I want to be...I want to be happy and healthy and talented and determined and I want to be with my family and my friends.

But when you're asked what you want to do you have to consider actual processes, and the actions you want to take to get things done. Which is essentially and conclusively much more complex and involved than just knowing what you want to be.