When i Grow up.

I have found myself lost in thought time and time again these last few days pondering a single question ...”What do you want to do?” We ask children all the time, “And what do you want to do when you grow up?” So here I am, all grown up, and I look around and I wonder to myself, how did I get here?

I’m not saying that I am unhappy with every facet of my life, not by a long shot, I have more to be thankful for than most. I would even put myself in league with the blessed ... and yet, and yet I am not doing what I want to be doing. Are you? I call out to all you prisoners of the cubicle and ask you, what happed to the plans to be a doctor, lawyer, soldier, policeman, fire fighter, race car driver, actor, model? How did it all go wrong for us all? I work in a place where I watch the homeless, the forgotten, the discarded of our society shuffle past the windows in an endless stream of humanity ... what happened to them? They had dreams once too and I can guarantee that no youngster’s dream is to be dirty, sun burned and hungry walking down Florida Ave just south of Busch Blvd.

So I don’t know what I want to be when I grow up, but I know what I want more of ... freedom, time with my daughters, money ... mostly I want to work for something meaningful, something other then profit. I feel like I’ve sold out most of the time, like I’ve sold out and the price was far too cheap.

I have been an opinionated loud mouth all my life, I spent more time in trouble for voicing my opinion than I did out of it, and now I hold my tongue to hold my job ... I have mouths to feed before you judge me too harshly. Mouths to feed and school to pay for and shoes and clothes and dentist appointments and minivan payments to make.

How many of us give up our ambitions to change the world to provide for our children when in reality they would be so much better off to be poor and to have a parent fighting for a better world. My children will not be proud of how many tires I sell tomorrow, but they might grow up to believe that anything is possible like I tell them if they saw me doing it. When I start thinking of turning the world on its ear one of the little cherubs comes to me with a smile and a twinkle in their eye and announces that they want to go to dance class, and we buy the dress and the tights and the shoes and the little dear looks so cute with her hair in a bun .... what’s a little more overtime to give the angels their dreams? Less time to think, less time to see them, less time to do anything ... working to get right where we started.