By Angela Dehart
Ambassador and Alumna at American Public University
Starting in kindergarten we begin asking kids what they want to be when they grow up. Notice I said “be” not “do,” inferring that the job defines identity. We give higher praise to the kids who say doctor, lawyer, or president.
Are we doing our kids an injustice? The sentiment to pursue your dreams comes from a good place. We want to encourage our young people to be highly productive, highly successful, and, let’s admit, wealthy.
As a society we’ve come to interpret those three attributes as happiness. To an extent it is true. It’s hard to be happy when you have to choose between paying your light bill or putting fuel in your vehicle. To a lesser extreme, but still apropos, it is easier to be happy when one can afford to buy good quality clothes, healthy food, and take yearly vacations.
By putting a few occupations on a pedestal too high for most to reach, we’ve created an environment of high stress for our children and set them up for a lifetime of a false sense of failure. We now try to cram every personality into a one-size-fits-all model of how life should be lived.
We tell children to follow their dreams, but to be truly respected they must choose from a short list of options. What a tragic bait and switch!
If we zoom out and examine this tendency from a sociological perspective, it makes sense. The success of our civilization is based on having highly-educated citizens that are leaders, innovators, and have an entrepreneurial spirit.
For civilization to thrive, we need physicians, teachers, legislators, and first responders. So, we naturally want to promote these ambitions. And, of course, every parent wants the pride and admiration of having a child in a highly-respected role.
What about the happiness and psychological well-being of those individuals that are happier and better suited to driving cross-country, tinkering with wires, or cleaning or serving food? Those jobs are viewed as low-class, low ambition, and menial. Why?
We need smart happy people in every role in society. Is our focus on only a few occupations as being worthy contributing to the dwindling middle class and a society beset with depression and dependency disorders?
We’ve structured a society in which people are only viewed as successful if they have a higher education degree and earn a six-figure salary. Other people are “just” a server or “just” a truck driver.
What is also left out of the follow your dreams advice is the reality of what goes along with the achievement of these high-demand professions. Most involve long, back-breaking hours that preclude healthy relationships, social connections, exercise, and leisure pursuits that are all vital to a healthy lifestyle.
Many doctors, lawyers, and politicians experience debilitating disillusionment when they discover that their dreams are choked with paperwork and bureaucracy. There are countless stories of lawyers and other successful professionals who walked away from millions of dollars to go do charity work in third-world countries or go mix drinks on an island beach.
[Related: The Secrets to a Great First Impression]
If we are to improve the emotional health of our society, we are simply going to have to shift our focus from pushing our young citizens to be something huge and move more toward encouraging them to know and value themselves independent of their profession. The profession they choose should be an expression of their values and a means to an end, not all that they are as people.
Stop dreaming and start living.
About the Author: Angela J Dehart is an Army Intelligence veteran who recently earned her bachelor’s degree in Environmental Science from American Military University. She has lived in Virginia Beach, Virginia for the last ten years with her three daughters where she works full time as a Document Control Specialist for a VDOT contractor and volunteers for The Nature Conservancy.
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