When you've grown up, what do you want to be?

17 October 2017 – I heard this question on a BBC Radio 4 broadcast last week and it stopped me in my tracks. Don’t ask me why. It is hardly an earth shattering question but it caught my imagination.

I asked a school teacher friend to ask her pupils that question, working on the basis that they would be willing to answer someone they know, like, and trust. I shall have to wait until after half-term to learn their answers. Timing doesn’t seem to be my strong point.

I put the same question to someone in a local coffee shop and was rewarded with an impressive list of aspirational job titles and career names. I’ve asked the question elsewhere, too, but nobody has given me the answer I had hoped to hear.

So, how about you? While you have been reading, have you been thinking about my question at the same time? What would YOU like to be? You, dear reader, now that you’ve grown up, what have you determined to be?

I have little doubt that you will be one in millions if any part of your reply includes the word

HAPPY

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Years ago I lived and worked in Dubai, U.A.E. in the days when the towering structures that dominate the skyline now were just a dream. Western expats worked hard and played hard and, mostly, we were well rewarded but in those days Dubai was listed internationally as a ‘hardship’ post. I had my first big heart attack while I was based there.

Asian and other Arab expats did the physical work (still do) and generally earned more money than they could normally earn back home, which is why they and we were there.  All of us worked for money and some worked for an imaginary prestige as well.

I remember buying a baseball-style cap with a badge on it that showed the image of something like a Rolls-Royce car and the slogan “He who dies with the most toys wins.”  Ha-ha-ha. That’s Dubai for you. But it is a lie. It suited us to ignore the fact that we couldn’t take any of our toys and new wealth to the grave. Merely, we had the use of them for a while.

Happiness wasn’t part of our creed. Life was about acquisition, instant gratification and, often, imaginary worth-to-the-world around us. Such philosophy substituted for happiness. For many, it still does. Which is why the question: “What do you want to be after you’ve grown up?” seemed so important.

I’ve written before about the American Declaration of Independence and I think it is worth another look:

“When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."
 

There we have it but we’ve lost sight of our objectives because ‘when you are up to your armpits in alligators, it’s not always easy to remember that your first objective was to drain the swamp’.  Or, put another way, when those people and those things that would misdirect us from our unalienable right to Life, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness, it is also the right of the people to alter or abolish it (them).

It seems to me that King George at that time, and Parliament then and ever since, never truly came to terms with this statement. He lost a colony. We haven’t yet finished counting what King George and the British parliament lost.

Now might be a good time to define Happiness. I put it to you that Life is not Life if it is spent goggle-boxing. I define goggle-boxing (voyeur-vision) as TV, computer, iPad, iPhone and any mixture of them that offer us a vicarious view of the world and in the process distract us from A REAL Life; (Coronation Street and Eastenders are not LIFE but they could be regarded as an insight to a form of life that no one with understanding would want to live); Liberty is not Liberty if someone else is able to tell you what you may or may not say or do, and impose a penalty if you fail to comply; (Liberty goes hand in hand with Responsibility but too often that is ignored); and Happiness isn’t really about acquisition and possession of THINGS. Happiness is an attitude, I believe. So is gratitude. We avoid both for the flimsiest of reasons which, for want of a better term I call ‘sophistication’. (Which I define as meaning unnatural).

You provide your own definition. Here is mine: ‘Happiness is being married to my best friend.’ I think that is all I need to say on the matter right now.

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Corporate Media tells us that the increased need for psychological tests and investigations, especially amongst our young people, can be managed only by applying ever greater taxed or borrowed financial resources and more trained staff. Maybe with some additional regulation, too. THESE ARE MAJOR LIES! What’s more, I think many of us know it.

Consider this: Children aren’t sophisticated. Children need to be fed, watered, and made to feel secure. I see them every morning as they run, shout, laugh and bounce their way to school, usually with Mum, displaying the unsophisticated ways of children. To all intents and purposes, they are happy. Then something happens.

Figuratively speaking, the world around them offers them an apple and everything changes for them once they’ve eaten it. Nothing changes in fact but for the children, one by one, everything changes for them. They become aware, knowledgeable, sophisticated. Eating the apple did it and we are told that it is a good thing to eat an apple a day.

Long ago a wise man provided his audience (and us) with wisdom. He called a little child to him and said to his audience: ‘Truly, I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.’ I wonder, does heaven equate to happiness? Wow! There’s a thought. The operative words are ‘unless you change’.

I’ve mused enough today. YOU read today’s (any day’s) newspaper headlines for yourself. The news isn’t good – anywhere. What’s more, THAT isn’t news. It’s been like that for centuries and we seem not to have learned a thing.

It’s been said that the definition of madness is ‘doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting to get a different result’. It leaves me with the question: ‘Should we continue in our madness or might it be a good thing if we changed?’ Might that be the way we discover happiness?

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An afterthought:

Children don't care about the colour of other children; they don't care what religion they are; they don't care what kind of car their parents drive nor what kind of house they live in. All these 'cares' have been learned.