There is a question we ask almost every child. We pose it lightly, with a smile, often in moments of calm or celebration, as if inviting them to enter the theater of possibility: What do you want to be when you grow up?
At first glance, it seems innocent enough, even kind. It encourages the child to imagine, to name a star they might follow. But if one pauses—truly pauses—and examines the question as one might examine a splinter that has lodged unnoticed beneath the skin, one discovers that it is not a question at all, but a directive masked as curiosity.
To ask a child what they want to be is to begin the process of transfiguring their being into a function. The question does not concern itself with what the child loves, what moves them to awe, or how they wish to live. It subtly insists that one’s identity must be wed to labor, and more specifically, to a role within the economy of production.
No child replies, “I want to be attentive,” or “I want to be kind,” unless taught to answer so. Instead, we await answers such as: a firefighter, a doctor, a teacher, a scientist, a celebrity. Even our admiration is rationed according to the productivity and prestige of the occupation named. A child who says, “I want to be a janitor,” is met not with applause but with discomfort or gentle redirection. The question, then, is not about being at all—it is about utility. It is about future placement in a machinery not of the child’s making.
And yet, we rarely reflect on the harm this does. We accept this small ritual as one of the benign fictions of childhood, like fairy tales or Santa Claus. But unlike fairy tales, which have the decency to acknowledge themselves as stories, this question disguises itself as wisdom. It does not give; it takes. It reaches into the child’s unfolding self and ties a string between their future and their value, between their life and their yield.
The child learns, perhaps without ever realizing it, that to grow up is not to become more fully alive, but to narrow oneself into a task. Life is preparation for labor. Education is a holding pen before usefulness. Adulthood is the point at which the soul is expected to disappear behind a résumé.
What a strange and tragic reduction this is. And how little we protest it.
Our society speaks often of freedom, and yet we sow captivity in the garden of the young. We do not speak to children of grace, of beauty, of the quiet dignity of being. We speak to them in terms of aspiration, and aspiration has come to mean occupation. It is a way of making the human being into a project, a capital investment. We applaud ambition, but our definition of ambition has become grotesquely flattened: it is no longer the aspiration of the soul toward the good, the true, the divine—it is the aspiration of the individual toward a profitable slot in the market.
Under the influence of this question, a child comes to believe that the purpose of their life is to become something that can be named, measured, and traded. They begin to ask not, “What is good?” but “What is successful?” Not, “How can I serve truth?” but “How can I get ahead?” It is the first step in training them to see their fellow human beings as competition rather than companions. And it is the first step in teaching them to see themselves not as ends, but as means.
In this, the question is not benign. It is the gentle hand of indoctrination. It is the first whisper of the doctrine that the only life worth living is one that contributes visibly and efficiently to the production and consumption that sustains the collective delirium we call progress.
I do not mean to suggest that labor is unworthy. On the contrary, labor—when it is freely chosen, when it arises from a place of love or necessity or service—can be noble. But when labor becomes the definition of a person, the measure of their dignity, it becomes an idol. The factory and the office become the new temples, and human beings bow not in prayer, but in exhaustion.
A truly human society would not ask a child what they want to be. It would ask, What do you love? What makes you feel wonder? What kind of world would you like to help build? These are questions that open the soul rather than closing it. They do not place the child into a mold, but allow the child to remain whole.
But we no longer speak in the language of wholeness. We speak in units of productivity, in data points, in efficiencies. Even the sacred has been forced to make its case in economic terms. We defend the arts not because they elevate the human spirit, but because they “create jobs.” We defend compassion not because it is good, but because it reduces crime or health care costs. The soul must now justify its presence with an invoice.
And so the child, once asked what they want to be, begins the long descent into abstraction. They begin to detach their worth from their inner life and tie it to an external goal. They are no longer asked to listen to the world or to themselves, but to chart a course toward usefulness. The vast, mysterious silence in which the soul might have grown is replaced by the ticking of the clock.
But we are not clocks. We are not engines. We are not job titles. We are not the sum of our salaries or accolades. We are, each of us, a cry for meaning made flesh. We are vessels of attention. And attention, as I have written elsewhere, is the rarest and purest form of generosity.
What happens when we cease to offer that generosity to our children? When we ask them to become cogs before they have even learned to be human?
We lose them. We lose them long before they reach the workplace. We lose their curiosity, their wildness, their reverence. We lose their ability to play without purpose. And when they grow up—if one can call it that—they become like us: tired, anxious, and always wondering why fulfillment remains just out of reach.
It is not too late to change this. But to do so we must begin by questioning the questions we take for granted. We must see the ideological machinery even in our most ordinary conversations. To ask, What do you want to be when you grow up? is to assume that being must always be for something. But the child is already something. A being. A presence. A mystery. That is enough.
Let us give them the time and space to be what they are. Let us protect their right to grow not toward productivity, but toward humanity. And let us remember that every life has worth—not because of what it does—but because of what it is.
Join us in making the world a better place – you’ll be glad that you did. Cheers friends.