When I Grow Up

How many times were you asked: “What do you want to be when you grow up?” I remember being asked this question repeatedly as a child. And, despite my best efforts, I ask my own children the same question. Not about what they want to be but about what they want to do. Work. Job. Career.

I often confuse doing with being. Perhaps because I spend most of my time doing things. Which is really not hard to do as doing seems to take an awful lot of time.

Benjamin Kline Hunnicutt in his book Work Without End had this to say:

Meaning, justification, purpose and even salvation were now sought in work, without a necessary reference to any philosophic or theological structure. Men and women were answering the old religious questions in new ways, and the answers were more and more in terms of work, career, occupation and professions.

As I have been reading Covey’s book, The 8th Habit, I have been giving a lot of consideration to his arguments about the disconnected work environment where we seem unable to engage people at the level of their passion and their voice. Joe Dominguez and Viki Robin in their book Your Money or Your Life offer this encouraging thought:

Is it any wonder that so many of us suffer midlife crises as we face the fact that our doing doesn’t even come close to expressing our being.

I wonder if Covey read their book.