WHAT DO YOU WANT ME TO BE WHEN I GROW UP?

This is not the way I wanted this "Thought" to start.  When I was looking for a theme "tag", I saw this and I knew that I should have thought of it 30 years ago.  So I have been trying to turn my body mechanics around a bit so that I can get my right foot to plant a swift and fast retributionary pain into my glutii maximi before I continue with this piece.  Especially since I knew then, [30 years ago, I mean] what the right answer to the child's question was, is and always will be, and I didn't put it out there for my son to use it.  Yuk!  I'll tell you why I should have been more alert at the end of the "paper."

I was about six or seven, I guess when one day I asked MJT Dion what she wanted me to be when I grew up.  She simply said, "That's up to you.  I'll never tell you what I want you to be."  Well, that was disappointing.  I didn't think of getting back to her 40 years later to repeat the question.  After all, I was somewhat older, though, like all boys, not yet grown up.  But, Hey, I forgot and never did get around to it.  In fact what I did do was to ask EFR Dion the same question when he appeared from work on the same day.  Boy, was I ever in for a shock.  He said, <your mother and I have promised ourselves that we would support you to become anything you want to be, as long as it is good.>  Just one minute here.  You mean that you and she actually have a strategy?  Sheeesh!  I can't begin to tell you how many nights I twisted and turned over that one.  Remember now, I wasn't even eight years old yet.  I don't know how old I was , but I sure know that I was not yet 8.  
It was the Sunday after the fateful day [I really remember this] when we were sitting around the "parlor" [sitting room, you know] reading the "Funny Papers" and everyone was there.  I asked if it was permitted to us to ask for advice about what to do with our lives.  The two adults looked at one another, I think they felt embarrassed, and they joined in to assure all of us that we could feel comfortable to ask them what we wanted and that they would help us.  You are reading this, shaking your head and not believing what you are seeing in your head.  But it is true.  Also, it did make me feel better.


Thirty plus years later.  Number one son, he who lived the first five days of his extra-uterine life without a name, asked me the fateful question: "What do you want me to be when I grow up?"  He had to think that he was in trouble or something because it took a few seconds while I enjoyed my life flashing before my eyes before I could answer.
"I want you to be a kind and honest man."  
"No, I mean, what do you want me to do, like work?"
"It doesn't matter to me, as long as you are kind and honest."
"What about Mama?"
"She thinks the same way."
"Really?"
"Yes, dear."
"Can I ask her?"
Now picture John Alden <standing first on on foot and then the other, and not knowing on which one he felt the better.> [Longfellow, Miles Standish]
"Of course."
I continue my chore, tremblingly, to be sure, in the conviction that I was now going to  have a series of miserable  nights, like those of yesteryear.
I should have relaxed.  The Voice of the Kitchen and I had had the "talk" long before the "question."  
My son has never commented on this.  He has asked for guidance, fully knowing that the spiritual part of his life was to come first in anything that he did, or was.


We had prepared ourselves for this moment because we are aware of the cultural differences that exist in our lives.  It has worked out well.  We think.


Now, about the ANSWER.  When my son asked me the "question" I knew the answer, but it didn't impose itself on my brain at the time.  The mother in the picture above has the right answer.  Be happy.  The goal of everybody is to be happy.  I learned that in my very first class in Philosophy 101.  The goal of every human being is to be happy.  How could I miss that?  I went to school from age 5 years and 9 months through age 28 and 3 months and I failed the easiest test question that I ever got.  Talk about Dunce, with a capital "D"!
Of course, I could talk to you for another year explaining what that "Be Happy" means, but just let me suggest that you stand in front of the mirror and talk it over with yourself for a while.  It will be less boring that way.