The other day, a bunch of us got together and started this silly game of "what did you want to be when you grow up". The responses all around were fairly predictable - pilot, scientist, astronaut etc etc.
While I was waiting for my turn, I tried hard to think about what I did want to be when I grew up but kept drawing a blank. The inevitable happened. They asked and I said...nothing. I had no ambition of being any specific profession after growing up. The usual banter followed with most of the people assuming that I was being haughty and just trying to stand out by not naming a profession. Some assumed I was being a jerk, some thought I was just unimaginative, others thought it must have been something weird that I didn't want to call out.
It was a silly game but it got me thinking. Did I really not have any ambition growing up? For the longest time, I remember that my only thought growing up was to be filthy rich. It is not like I grew up dirt poor or among very rich friends but all I remember thinking was that I just want to make a lot of money when I grow up. I saw my father being worried about money for most his life though he never told us about this. Somewhere, deep down, I thought if I just have a lot of money by any means necessary, all the troubles will go away. This is of course, not a profession and not something you mention in a friends group specially if you are not filthy rich already.
I am an engineer by education but I don't think I even wanted to be one till the day I got an admission into an engineering college. I didn't think too hard about leaving my home country till I did. I sat for an MBA admissions test and cracked one of the hardest exams in my home country (didn't clear the interview though) but didn't even know what MBA implied even when I went for the interview.
Sometimes I think I am just like an old rotten leaf that a tree shed into a fast flowing river. The leaf has no will of it's own, it just goes where the river takes it. I have been accused of being "passive" and "soft" more times than I can count. It angers me but, somehow, that never hurts. What did hurt once was when my sister told me that her son was like me in the way that he "just does the minimum to do what's good enough and never realizes his true potential". Am I really like that? Do I really have more potential that I think I do? Am I just plain lazy? I have often wondered what qualities people see in me? I am not in the least humble but do I underestimate myself or do I put a facade for people?
As to my "ambition", I did start out trying to be rich but then, life happened. Rather, death happened. Two or them. My father went first and it broke me in more ways than I thought possible. He saw and heard of me living a hard life and passed away a couple of months after I bought my first house. I wanted nothing more than to have him come and see my house. He never could. Ten years later, my mother left as well and suddenly money, or the accumulation of it, made no sense at all.
Life goes on...I have some money. If rest of my life takes the expected course, I will have more. Will I have enough? Or is the right question to ask here is that will I have enough that my kids will, one day, be able to name what they wanted to be growing up and not be embarrassed that the only thing they can think of is that they just wanted more money.
