The Question

*originally published in March

Notes on the time I finally had a reply to "Who Do You Want to Be When You Grow Up?" (over thirty-five years too late and when the question wasn't even addressed to me)

We had visitors on Sunday afternoon - business partner and his wife popping in for coffee and cake. Perfect. Nothing motivates a spotless house like a surprise guest call: "We are in town, are you around, we will come over after 12". I had the place looking like a show-home within an hour, every drawer closed, every cushion plumped, every trace of chaos temporarily banished.

The visitor, a perfectly lovely man in his seventies, did the thing men in their seventies always do when they spot a teenager who just started secondary school last September. He turned to my son and asked, with genuine interest:

"So what do you want to do after you finish high school?"

Before my son could even open his mouth, before he could offer a single normal teenage shrug or "I dunno", I launched in, with the highest level of ADHD impulsivity, like someone who has been waiting over 35 years to answer this exact question. My son was probably delighted. A credible excuse to disappear back to his bedroom and phone calls with his friends, courtesy of his mother's accidental TED Talk on an inevitable AI apocalypse and plumbing.

"What kind of question is that in your day and age," I announced, "when nobody knows which jobs will be straight-up stolen by AI in the next five years?!"

Yes. Finally. After thirty-odd years of having zero answer to the most philosophical question humanity ever asks a child, I had the perfect reply. And at the time the question wasn't even addressed to me.

I was off. Human skills! Artistic skills! Critical thinking! Leadership! And then I swerved hard into the trades: "Plumbing! Carpentry! Someone's got to know how to fix a leaking tap while the robots are unionising in the background!"

I rambled for a solid two minutes about adaptability, emotional intelligence, creativity, flexibility and how the future belongs to the people who can actually fix leaking pipes while quoting poetry. Two full minutes of pure, unfiltered stream-of-consciousness brilliance. Or chaos. Probably both.

Thankfully my husband appeared like a guardian angel of social survival - bearing coffee and cake on a tray - and I finally shut up mid-sentence, mid-plumber-metaphor.

The visitor nodded politely, turned a slight shade of pink (heat of the house? my monologue? sudden existential regret?), and murmured something agreeable. I still don't know if he was being kind or if I'd accidentally roasted his entire generational career advice.

Because here's the thing: I have never once had an answer to that question for myself.

After school I wanted to study philosophy - you know, actual deep thoughts about life, meaning, existence, why are we actually here. But my loving parents gently explained that there are no jobs for professional philosophers outside academia. They were right at the time, which made it worse.

So I tried marketing for one semester - it sounded creative, and business meant money. I lasted until the day one lecturer explained that our future job was to manufacture artificial needs for people, to make them buy things they don't actually want or need. I stood up mid-lecture, walked out, and never went back. My act of rebellion to protect my integrity and show my dislike for pure consumerism. But I didn't drop out of business studies entirely. I changed to Quality Management because it looked the most promising. On paper it sounded almost philosophical: continuous improvement, kaizen, eliminating waste. Spiritual awakening through spreadsheets. What I discovered in my first real job in quality management department of a big corporation was that in practice it is mostly sophisticated document control. It can be really beneficial for the business, but it's ultimately quite boring and far removed from the exploration of the meaning and purpose of human existence. From that moment on I knew it was never going to be "what I wanted to do when I grew up"... so here I am, still searching, still changing professions - the "who I want to be" - every few months, whenever a new hyperfixation arrives complete with a new temporary identity.

But I've been thinking a lot about it lately. Maybe unintentionally, but by certain questions and their framing we teach children that profession and identity are the same thing. Or at least close. I am a doctor. I am a lawyer. I am a plumber. The noun sticks. I have never found that noun for myself.

I have a degree in quality management and do it as my job but I have never truly called myself a quality manager. The closest noun I've ever reached for is a mother - and even that, as true and central as it is, isn't quite my full identity either.

Maybe this is why I still haven't really answered the question. Not because I don't know myself - but because the question assumes an answer I was never going to have.

I think - am I a thinker? I seek - am I a seeker? Maybe a pattern finder? A hobbyist philosopher who walked out of a marketing lecture and never quite stopped walking. That's not a profession. It doesn't fit on a business card. But it might be enough. For me I think it is.

I sometimes wonder what will happen to the accountants or the lawyers when AI makes their noun redundant. Whether the identity goes with the job title, or whether something truer was always underneath it waiting..

The rest of that afternoon was lovely, the cake was excellent and the visitors survived. They invited us over to theirs for a dinner, so my outburst couldn't have been that bad after all. I've also promised myself that the next time someone asks my son the “who do you want to be..” I'll let him answer for himself. He has a great ability when it comes to critical thinking, so I can let him roast the next person that asks “the question”.