What Do You Want To Be When You Grow Up?

We all reach a certain point in our lives where we take a moment to reflect on what has passed, as well as what the remainder of our days may hold for us. The sad thing is that all too many of us wait until we are at an age where change becomes impossible. I say that because there is a very good chance that you will look upon your past and realize that you are not entirely happy with where you are and that a large portion of your life has been for naught. The question that needs to be asked is why does that happen?

We are taught from a very early age that we must go to school so that we can get a good education, which will then allow us to have a great career, which in turn usually leads to money. Therein lies the problem, you see. Someone much wiser than me once said that money makes the world go around, yet they failed to mention that it can create that rotation at the expense of personal happiness and satisfaction. Too many people follow that belief because they have been told that it’s true by the people that they trust: their parents.

What leads one man or woman to the paintbrush and easel, or the written word, while their peers head out into the world in search of fame and fortune? I’m guessing that it might just be that those kids were allowed to dream, quite possibly by parents who didn’t wait too long to look at the trail they had left behind. Perhaps they had dreams of their own that had nothing to do with the never ending quest for more money and more stuff, or at least more than the Jones’s next door.

We live in a world driven by money, of that there is no argument, but the decision to be made is whether to chase it, or allow it to come to us. Watch your children closely, and look to see what it is that inspires their little minds. Do that, and you might not be quite so surprised when they come and tell you that they want to skip college to pursue an acting career, or life as a novelist. Instead of forcing them onto that all too familiar treadmill of life, why not encourage them to follow their dreams, where the money might just choose to follow them.