An aside – The determined fate of the determined youth…
A thought came to me a day ago… We, probably, all know people who have fulfilled their youthful aspirations. What does that mean? When a child is asked what they want to be; let’s pick an age, something before teenage awareness and rebellion, but well into self-consciousness… 11. Let’s pick a profession…something that other people admire or respect, something difficult and “rewarding”… a doctor.
When people ask them what they want to be and the precocious pup replies a doctor where are they getting this from? Perhaps their mother or father is a doctor, perhaps their parents enjoy watching medical soap operas on the television, perhaps they have had an experience with a doctor in some way, but whatever the reason I think it is like they have had some reason to believe that other people admire or respect doctors. They crave admiration and respect (or any/many of a multitude of feelings, but I think these two are likely candidates to have a powerful effect at that age), and so choose this profession without any real understanding of what being a doctor entails.
Now come the problems… we have [probably] all been asked something similar to this question by grandparents, parents, aunts, uncles, teachers, etc… and of course we have to come up with some kind of answer so we choose one we think will satisfy the psychological standards of the person doing the asking. However, there are many difficulties involved in become a doctor (or whatever position we filled in the blank with).
There are simple difficulties like do we live in the right environment to allow us to actually fulfills our intention? Are doctors in demand and encouraged in our society? Do our parents maintain a lifestyle that may continue to contribute towards this, at the moment speculative, aspiration? Do we maintain sufficient encouragement from our surroundings; do our friends mock our choice and further decisions, do our parents continue to encourage the desire or do they negatively discourage us in a multitude of conscious or unconscious ways, do our teachers believe in us and motivate us, or do they, again consciously or unconsciously, recondition us into losing our faith? Perhaps more importantly does our movement towards this profession continue to engender admiration and respect (does the continuation of this pursuit make us a slave to admiration and respect, making us more vulnerable to people who find our profession unimpressive – a thought to be pursued elsewhere, perhaps…)?
My point being… we all answer something when asked this question at a certain age, and when we meet people who have fulfilled this response in later life we are filled with admiration and respect for such tenacious souls, but is it really their unwavering will power which has led them to attain their goals or simply all the right planets lining up in the sky at the right time? For the fatalistic variables to line up over so many years the chances are obviously slim, and thus we find so few of us actually reach those childhood fantasies, fantasies we really could have no hope of understanding at the time we claimed them as our own. It is only the right motivation and the right opportunities, guiding/allowing us that direct us finally to these goals.
A lack of insight into this process, combined with the rare whims of fortune that allow them to come to pass, necessitating the relatively few people who actually attain these childhood dreams and ambitions, lead other, the majority, to view these souls as particularly imbued with excess willpower, and thus grant them the very wish slowly being further inculcated into them… respect and admirations…
Something to dwell on…
