“When you know what you want to be, you inevitably become it – that is your punishment.” – Oscar Wilde
I came across this quote recently and I can’t stop thinking about it. I’m not sure of the source or the context it was written in, but standing alone, this quote really makes a good point and seems to hold a lot of truth.
People tend to live their lives by a certain formula. A lot of us follow a specific timeline and our lives seem to dispatch in a pattern. There’s a certain point in your life when you’re told to choose what you want to be. This question usually emerges in your childhood when adults ask you this question, and most children will usually choose an answer derived from their wildest dreams or a practical career option that they’ve learned about. Then to commence adulthood, you’re told to go to college or university, choose a career path, and become what you want to be.
Oscar Wilde challenges that with this quote. We are not things. We are humans who do things. If we limit ourselves to one thing to do for the rest of our lives, we diminish the possibility of being something else. We limit ourselves to certain experiences. I’m surprised that no one really questions this. Many people express their concerns of being too young when they have to choose a career path, but no one has ever really questioned the actual process of choosing. Why do we have to choose one thing to be? I have definitely had trouble deciding what I wanted to do with my life and anybody who knows me, knows that I still struggle with this. This quote and the idea that we are not nouns, but verbs, make me question why I need to choose anyways. Of course I know why we need to choose careers and why it’s important to get an education to do so, but it can sometimes feel limiting, which is why I try to take as many different courses and try out as many different fields as I can.
The consequences of knowing what you want to be is that that will possibly be all that you are. Obviously this isn’t technically true, we can be more than one thing but there is that idea that we need to aspire to be one thing when were told we need to choose a career. It then becomes the basis of our identity, the icebreaker between strangers, and often the main topic of our conversations.
I have always wanted to try many different things and even as a child I always found it frustrating that I had to choose one profession when I had so many interests and so much curiosity. Still today I feel the same frustration. I know what I love to do but I have so many hobbies and interests. Not to say that you have to make a career out of everything you like to do, but the idea that I could be missing out on something concerns me. Thinking of ourselves as nouns can cause imprisonment. There are so many possibilities and I think we should try as many new things as we possibly can.
Try to refrain from shaping yourself around one career that you think you want to work in, and let your experiences and work shape who you are. Let it help you create yourself. Don’t be conditioned to a life of security and conformity. You don’t always have to have a plan, and you don’t always need to know what you want to do or where you’re going. In fact, if you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you where you should be.
Everyone puts so much emphasis on the importance of finding yourself, and although I think knowing who you are is the greatest wisdom a human being can possess, I believe that life is about creating yourself. If you define yourself, you’re excluding the possibility for change. You should always be changing and you should always be growing. You can only do that if you’re living and encountering new experiences. If this is our only life, why aren’t we doing everything that we want to do? Go out and try something new today!