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Predicament: What You Want to Be 3/11/2012 8:56:59 PM
He was one of the ugliest men I’ve ever seen. His hair was disheveled. His beard was scraggy. He wore dilapidated pants and shirt. But when he talked, he talked with authority, directing another disheveled and scraggy gent to do his bidding. He commanded business over the phone. And I said to myself that he can command business just because the other person on the other line can’t see him. After all, he was on the phone. But a nice looking gent went in and like the man he commanded and the way he conducted himself with folks on the other line, he commanded him, too. He had his computers and he did not suffer any technical obsolescence. He had his hefty bags and like a good businessman, he discussed things like the world depended on it.
This brings me to the fact that indeed looks did not dictate what we presumed that person would be. Close your eyes and listen to the man (or woman) next to you. How would you imagine him to be? Would you picture the guy as someone decent just because he sounded like someone with a high fallutin language or a man who jumps out of an unmade bed early in the morning and hurrying up to go to work?
Early in life, many people asked us what we wanted to be in the future. Of course, what we could imagine was what you are going to be? A lawyer. A doctor. An engineer. A school teacher. No one could ever imagine you to be a failure, but a failure? The future could be anything you wanted it to be for it has not yet been realized. But these are professions; professions that could make you a living. This dictated what car you are going to drive, what your family would be and what home you will be having. To be a doctor or an engineer spelled success. And not being one of them definitely would be a failure.
But growing up did not bode well in being a doctor or engineer, per se. Character could play a significant role in determining who you are; in fact character is one factor discounted in the “what are you going to be” question. A teacher in my first year in high school told us kids that we would retain 50% of our character. I somehow doubted that. The future was too far away and the influence of genes and the environment did not have any effect on us yet. But she somehow knew.
Character was one of those factors that dictate how one would be, be they doctors or engineers. It tells people that you have pride in yourself, no matter how you looked like. You have self-assurance and that you are dignified. Success depends on your character whether you are a doctor or an engineer; or you are humble writer, like me.
So when one asks me now what I wanted to be when I grow up, I would respond that I would want to be a decent guy, that I have character. Character is important too, not in just being a doctor or engineer. It spelled out who I am.
We shape our destiny but never forget that if you had been led astray, character will pull us back to the straight and narrow path.
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