This past week was a celebratory one in our home. My oldest – WDC – finished up his preschool stint, I celebrated a birthday, and my wife’s patience endured long enough to commemorate another year of marriage for us. It was a fun and relaxing week during which I got to spend time with my loved ones as well as take in a couple of outstanding concerts.
While reviewing the week’s festivities with my five-year-old son, our discussion turned to a familiar topic for us. “When I grow up, I am going to drive a train,” he said for probably the 7,000th time of his life. My oldest son has been blessed with the clear vision of what he wants to do for a living from infancy. If you have the time and interest, he will gladly be more specific and let you know that he intends to be a steam locomotive engineer on a particular route stretching from Colorado up into Wyoming. If you have even more time, he will pull up some YouTube footage and walk you through the tiny details of the train’s interior and exterior complete with humorous stories about their history. It is amazing and slightly terrifying at the same time.
This past weekend, though, he caught me off-guard by shifting the conversation back to me. Perhaps it was my recent birthday or his preschool graduation that had him thinking beyond the railroad for a moment, but WDC asked me from his van booster seat, “Dad, what do you want to be when you grow up?” In his five-plus years, he had never turned the familiar question back around on me.
As we rode on in silence, I started to allow his question to really unfold in my mind. How would I have answered the question at his age? How would I have answered the question when I was in high school? What does the job I have now say about me and my motivations and aspirations in life? Yes, these were a lot of questions to be generated from a simple conversation with a young child, but my mind jumps down these rabbit holes from time to time, and I just go with it.
Describing how I make my living to someone who is not familiar with the inner workings of large corporations is a tough chore. You could describe me as a supply chain professional for the world's largest radiopharmaceutical drug manufacturer or as a materials specialist for a leading molecular imaging company. Both are true, but neither would be a “sexy” answer for a kindergarten or high school student. If you went back in time and found a young BDC and relayed this future fate, I don’t think you would exactly get a high-five or a fist-pump reaction from that version of me.
This is not to say that I do not enjoy what I do for a living or that I dislike my current job, of course. I work with some great people. We are paid well and have great benefits. My schedule is flexible and my office is less than two miles from my house. You will rarely hear me complain about my job.
Then again, you will rarely see me go out of my way to tell people what I do for a living, either. Even in response to WDC’s question, I said “astronaut” as opposed to explaining that I was pretty “grown up” already and had over a decade of work in my chosen field behind me. It would not be accurate to say that I am ashamed of my job, but it would probably be worth my time to explore why I am less than enthusiastic about it as well.
As I was growing up, I wanted to be an accountant. Seriously, that probably tells you all you need to know about how cool I was as a young fellow. Yes, there were the earliest wishes to be as cool as the Junkyard Dog and become a professional wrestler, but from my early teens to college years, I was all about becoming an accountant. How cool would it be to get paid money just for helping other people count their money?
That was my line of thinking until I got to college. One school year as an accounting major was enough to convince me that I did not – in fact – want to be an accountant at all. It turns out that while you do get paid for counting other people’s money, those people get very angry when you mess that up. Thus you get the stress of managing lots of money without the benefits of actually having lots of money. No thanks.
I decided to become a statistics major instead. I still loved numbers and began to picture myself moving to a big city and landing a job as a statistician for a professional sports franchise. The stats classes were a lot of fun, but I got my first taste of the real world when “Career Day” rolled around. On a campus of over twenty thousand students, less than ten of us were stats majors. The bad news was that only about four employers showed up to recruit us, and they were all either insurance companies or the government. Where were all the pro sports franchises?
As I walked out of the room deflated, I looked down the hallway and saw the “Logistics Career Day” in full swing. They had so many companies that they were using the largest convention room, and the recruiters were still spilling out the door. The next day, I marched to my advisor’s office and officially become a logistics and transportation major. My career fate for the next twelve years was sealed with that one instinctive decision. It has led me to work for three amazing companies and allowed me to live in three wonderful states, but at what cost?
Looking back on it now, I can clearly recall the class that engaged me most and inspired my highest efforts was a creative writing class that I took strictly as an elective. Deep down, I guess I knew even back then that writing and expressing my thoughts and emotions in words on a page was an important aspect of my life. If I had it to do over, would I go back and change course one more time? I have often joked – especially after the more stressful days inside my cubicle – that I would love to go back and punch my college self in the face until he agreed to leave business school, but would I really want to?
What do I want to be when I grow up? The more I considered it, the more I realized the question could not – and should not – be answered. “When I grow up” is not a final destination at all. If we are living life right, we are all “growing up” until the day that we die. Even if we stop growing physically, we should certainly continue to grow mentally, spiritually, and emotionally.
My inquisitive five-year-old was on the right track, but his phrasing was wrong. The better question we should ask ourselves is, “What do I want to be as I grow up?” Maybe I am not there today, but that just means I need to work toward it again tomorrow.
As I grow up, I want to be the best husband and father that I can be. I want my wife and boys to know that they are loved and protected. The wisdom and maturity of age makes me better equipped for this every year – as does the growing understanding that our time on Earth is fleeting and every second with our loved ones is a gift to not be taken for granted.
As I grow up, I want to be the best friend that I can be. I want the people that allow me in their lives to feel enriched by my presence there. The true friends that I have made in my lifetime are the greatest gifts and sources of strength that I could ever ask for, and I hope to return those favors for many years to come.
As I grow up, I want to be the best man that I can be. I want to daily improve myself in all aspects – physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. There is no way to live life to the fullest without reaching your God-given potential and that means investing time in your well-being.
As I grow up, I want to stop chasing my grand “purpose” in life and start “purposefully” living the life I have. It may not be my lot in life to be a famous wrestler or a rich accountant or an influential writer, but I can influence the people around me. I can bring them joy, I can show them love, and I can tell them about Jesus. If a small circle of family and friends one day stand over my grave and say those three things about me, my soul will rejoice.
I will not be surprised if my oldest son is one day riding the rails in Wyoming, but I will not be disappointed if he is churning out spreadsheets in a tiny cubicle somewhere in Ohio either. What he becomes when he “grows up” is not the job he chooses, but is instead something that will evolve until his final day and be decided by those he leaves behind. For all the time that God grants me with him and his mother and his brother, I am going to do everything in my power to leave a legacy of faith, love, laughter, learning, and growing. Hopefully, one day – when he is older and thinks back to the time he asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up – he can chuckle, shake his head, and conclude that his crazy father never did stop growing up.
