Yesterday, while on a field trip with my daughter's class of preschoolers, my wife was deep in conversation with one of the other mothers, when a small voice called out to her, "Excuse me! Excuse me!" Candace turned her attention to one of the students, a boy named Eli, who obviously had something very urgent that needed to be relayed to a parent.
"Yes, Eli?" my wife asked him, no doubt expecting to hear about a need to use the restroom or that somebody's pumpkin had been taken by another student.
"When I grow up, I want to be a landscaper."
Candace laughed and offered an, "Oh yeah?" sort of response.
"Yes, and I will have a tractor that is too big to fit on the trailer that I pull behind my pickup truck."
When my wife relayed this story to me later in the day, I laughed at the humor of it, but it got me thinking. When I was four, I had all sorts of aspirations to do big things that I enjoyed, but never even considered the "prestige" or financial implications of those desires. I knew what I liked. I knew what I wanted to do. Nobody could tell me no.
I fast-forward a few years and find myself working in a cubicle, staring at a computer, growing stale under artificial light and controlled temperatures. Is this the career I had dreamed of? Not really. There are a lot fewer dinosaurs, airplanes and magic taking place than I had ever envisioned.
It's the story that most of us can tell. Our goals and priorities change, we take what we can get, we settle for mediocre because it is comfortable, or we kill ourselves working jobs we hate because of the recognition and the lifestyle it affords us.
Maybe Eli will change his mind as he grows up. He'll discover he has a desire to drive an expensive car. He'll want the next iDevice that Apple cranks out. He'll want the notoriety of having words like "Senior Vice President" in his job title.
Or maybe Eli will grow up to be the World's Greatest Landscaper, just like he had dreamed.
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