Aspirations

Every child, as they are growing up, is asked many times "What do you want to be when you grow up?" Answers fall over the spectrum, but the main idea of the question is to get them thinking about their future. Several weeks ago, my father asked me what I wanted to be and it has been something that stayed with me. On my morning walk I pondered the question and had a kind of revelation, an epiphany about what the question really gets one to ask oneself. "What do you think you will be doing when you have reached your full potential?" When I thought about it this way specifically, I give more credence to my past experience's, my life as a whole, and I'll honestly say, I can't answer the question. I don't know myself well enough to be able to speculate what I may become. Do any of us really know ourselves so well that the future holds no surprises for us. The answer is no. Partly because I don't believe one can know their self so that well, but mostly because the world can't help but throw a wrench in the work and in that crucial second, the world you knew is gone. An offshoot of your existence that you will never see again. And if we could, would we want to? Some say ignorance is bliss, but our own future, like it or not, is a subject our mind is naturally inclined to dwell on. In the end, this is how I decided to wrap things up: to some extent, life can be predicted. Not with crystal balls, tea leaves or the stars, but by knowing yourself. But don't have the audacity to believe that you can cheat fate of another end, because like the beating of a butterfly's wing, the smallest action in the world can influence our lives in an infinite number of ways.