What Should Children Become When They Grow Up? A New Way to Think About It.

A lot of children grow up believing that they must become something when they grow up.

A doctor.

A pilot.

A filmmaker.

An athlete.

A chef.

And almost always, the “something” they must become is a profession.

We encourage children to dream, yes, but so often the dream we hand to them is a narrow, pre-defined one. Become successful in this. Become great in that. As though what children should become when they grow up is a fixed, predetermined answer.

This morning, at 5:30 a.m., while dropping my son for his monthly trek, a very different kind of conversation unfolded.

The sky was still dark.

We were on the same road we used to take when he attended cricket coaching at dawn, not so long ago, just last year. Those early morning drives had their own warmth, and today something about the dark morning made both of us remember.

I casually said to him,

“Maybe in a year or two, when you’re older, we can resume cricket again. If you really feel the drive from within.”

We had discontinued because almost every class would get rained out. What should’ve been a 3-month monsoon stretched from May to October. The ground was always soaked, classes were empty, and eventually we paused the whole thing.

He has taken on other athletic interests since then. He enjoys them and nothing feels missing.

So I said it lightly, that if cricket still calls him deeply a few years from now, we’ll return to it.

He listened. And then he replied with something that opened up a whole world of thought.

“People become professional cricketers at my age. They start training very young.”

That was the moment the conversation shifted from activity to identity.

So I asked him gently,

“Do you want to be a professional cricketer?”

“I’d like it.”, he said.

And that’s when I found myself thinking aloud, almost more for myself than for him.

I said,

“For the one who is meant to become a truly professional, internationally competent cricketer, life unfolds in a way that they simply know from within. Life supports that knowing… and they engage with it fully, wholeheartedly, consistently. And then they grow into the professional they were always meant to become.”

But that neither means you cannot be one, nor does it mean you have to be one.

You don’t have to play cricket only to become a professional cricketer.

You can simply play because you love playing.

You can train seriously and still not want the title.

You can do something deeply without needing it to turn into a profession.

And then I said a sentence that, even as I said it, struck me with its simplicity:

“You don’t have to be anything unless you truly, truly want to be. And not the kind of “wanting” that is shaped by the world outside… but knowing from within.”

So much of our living is shaped by external goals.

Become a doctor.

Become a lawyer.

Become a sportsperson.

Become “successful.”

But what if we set a different goal entirely?

What if the goal was you?

Not the profession.

Not the title.

Not the identity.

Just you, your life, your presence, your inner compass in this moment.

Today you may love cricket.

Two years later your heart might pull you towards something else entirely.

Why must a child commit at eleven to what his thirty-year-old self must become?

We forget that life moves in phases.

I reminded him of his “Lego phase”, when he would build for hours, lost in his little universe of bricks.

And now he’s in a full-on Rubik’s Cube phase, learning 20, 30 algorithms, reducing his average from 30 seconds to 25, to 20, to 12… diving in passionately because it calls him.

Does he want to become a professional speedcuber? Probably not. 

Does he enjoy it deeply right now? Absolutely.

And that is enough.

When our goal becomes a fixed external idea, become a cricketer, become an athlete, become a dancer, we lose sensitivity to the subtle inner movements that guide us through life.

And maybe that is the real question behind what children should become when they grow up, not a profession, not a title, but themselves, phase by phase, calling by calling.

The deeper question behind all this is something spiritual:

Why was I born?

Was I born to achieve a title?

Or was I born to experience life, through curiosity, through joy, through engagement, through presence?

What if the real task of life is not to become something, but to meet ourselves, moment by moment, fully awake?

What if childhood, and perhaps adulthood too, is actually a long remembering of who we are at each phase…

And not a race to become something at the end.

My son listened.

Truly listened.

Openly.

Softly.

And I realised, maybe children don’t need us to give them goals.

Maybe they need us to give them permission. Permission to follow what calls them now. Permission to change direction later. Permission to live from the inside out.

So here’s the invitation I’m sitting with today:

What if we stopped asking children “What will you become?”

and instead asked,

“What calls to you right now?”

What if we stopped chasing the one destination

and instead lived the journey with sensitivity and awareness?

What if the real measure of a life wasn’t who you became

but how fully you lived?

And maybe this is also true:

Money often pulls us back into the idea that we must choose a profession. But if we look at the world around us today, it’s clear that money is not loyal to professions. It is loyal to energy. To sincerity. To joy. To the spirit of creating and sharing.

People earn through things that didn’t exist ten years ago.

They monetise passions, skills, experiments, and even phases.

Perhaps the real reminder is this:

Monetising what you love has nothing to do with locking yourself into a profession.

It has everything to do with doing what you do with fun, love, and wholeheartedness.

I think our children deserve that freedom.

And perhaps, so do we.

Want to engage in conscious self-work? Talk to me. Coach with me. Grow with me.

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