Being Anything You Want

I was thinking very briefly on this just yesterday.  I’ve held this belief for a while, but only recently seen the evidence of its veracity.  And it is the idea of the self-made man or, more in the language of the point I want to make, that we can be anything we want.

My point is this – what good we do in this life is of no thanks to us.  Whatever great things we do in this life, it is not because we are great.  It is because we did what we were supposed to do.  Conversely, whatever failings we had, it is not because we are a failure.  It is because we did not do what we were supposed to do.

There is this feel-good philosophy prevalent in the modern child-rearing approach that anyone can be anything.  “You can be anything you want, honey.”  It sounds nice and helps us sleep better at night when we tell our kids this, but I believe that its intention is wrong.

The intention of that philosophy is to instill in kids the idea that if they want something bad enough, they can get it.  If they want to be President of the United States – they can if they want it bad enough.  The fact is, the kid that wants to be President eventually wakes up and realizes that the dream died several years ago and that they failed on some level by not being President.  Yes, they failed, but they failed in a journey that they weren’t supposed to take in the first place.

But for most of us, we don’t even get the chance to wake up one morning to go to a dead end job and realize that we failed.  We’ve had grown-ups intervene before then.  They’ve been through this dream, fail, live your life cycle.  The dreams that you have as a kid don’t work out even if you want it bad enough.  So at some point they take it upon themselves to help us wake up and face the “real” world.  They teach us of more “practical” considerations in picking a career or finding a path, without real consideration of who we are as persons.  And we believe them because there is an amount of sense in it.  You need food.  You need a place to stay.  A car would be nice and working a bad job so I can go on vacation once a year sounds like a good plan.

No – I really think that the philosophy of “anyone can be anything” is not to teach kids that they can be anything that they want if they want it bad enough, but rather that they could have the skills to be anything – they just need to find what that anything is.  It is to encourage the child who doodles in class instead of listening to their teacher that being an illustrator one day is a real option in life.

Finding that “anything” is the goal in growing up and the practical considerations of life will be taken care of – it might take some creativity.

How about instead of looking at the kid wanting to grow into a magnanimous adult, let’s take a look at a mover-and-shaker of the world and work backwards.  Albert Einstein is a great example.  He’s unanimously regarded as a phenomenal genius in theoretical physics.  Did he have to work at being a genius?  Besides some mathematical training - no, it was ingrained within him.  He did not come from a pedigreed academic background or any connections other than those he had as a patent clerk.  The gift of genius was within him.  The reason that he became the ubiquitous Einstein is because he let his genius shine through.

Alternatively, Einstein could have taken the practical route and just stayed a patent clerk.  It paid the bills, why rock the boat?

But the point is this: Einstein’s genius was not because he wanted it bad enough.  It was there the whole time; he chose to let it shine through.  And, that is what we should do with our own unique gifts.

Not many of us will attain the same stature as Einstein, and that is fine.  Even by allowing our own geniuses to shine through, we won’t all be regarded as immortal geniuses.  I think that when we dream of what we want to become, we are interested in what our stature will be with regard to the rest of humanity.  We want to be this towering giant of prowess, when in fact, we would be perfectly happy being Joe Shmoe doing his thing to pay the bills.  Just because we are true to ourselves doesn’t imply fame and fortune will follow.

We were given these gifts (or lack thereof) by no power of our own.  Therefore, by being true to what we are, we should never be left wanting in what we need.  God made us the way that we are and He made us to be ourselves.  Why do we think that if we do what God made us to do, that we wouldn’t be able to survive?  Why would He make something destined for failure, when we have the assurance that He loves us and wants us to be with Him in heaven?

In the end, the only power that we possess is the power to use the gifts that God gave us.

God bless,

Sven