WHEN I WAS in
elementary school, my parents told me it didn't matter what I did when I
grew up, so long as it made me happy. "Happiness is the whole point of
life,” my father said. "Your mother loves to help people, so she became
a nurse. I love reading, writing, and poetry, so I became an English
teacher. We both find happiness in the work we do each day.”
A few years
later when I was in junior high, my grumpy sixth-grade homeroom teacher
put me in detention for "being difficult”: She went around the classroom
and asked each student what they wanted to be when they grew up. When
she got to me, I told her I wanted to be happy. She told me I was
missing the whole point of the question. I told her she was missing the
whole point of life.
What do we
all want to be when we grow up? Happy ... that is all. Find what makes
you happy and do it until you die.