The one thing you should never ask a child
Remember when you were young, people would ask, "What you want to be when you grow up?"
It would be surprising if any of us, being reminded of this question, would not immediately remember that one middle-aged woman or man from our past, who harassed us as children with this cruel question as our parents watched, all smiles, awaiting our answer with bated breath as though all their parenting was being graded with this one question.
There we were, 10-year-olds, playing with a Barbie or a G I Joe action figure, or a wooden stick, or a pressure cooker even and, in the midst of our lovely patriarchal indoor games, we would be disturbed by a bored adult with this all-important question about our future.
It is the most predictably moronic conversation that has a 100 percent rate of occurring if you put a speaking child and an adult in each other’s company.
The first two questions are simple, fact based: What’s your name? What class are you in?
But these are unfailingly followed by a complicated bomb: What you want to do when you grow up?
Could there be a more-loaded question in the history of humankind? The answer would be easy for any other species.
A baby panda would want to be, well alive, given the statistics.
A Tiger-cub, again alive. A puppy would aim to become dog and not die under a car. But for a human child - it is the question of all questions.
And so why would an adult, with barely a grip on their own life ask a little child about something as important as this.
Moving forward with this daal-chawals of conversations, the acceptable answer is never "I don’t know" or "a house-wife" or any of those multiple achievable targets.
Depending on the level of self-confidence instilled in children by their approving or disapproving parents, the answer always must be one that would generate applause, shock or laughter.
It has to mean something, and of course, it has to be spectacular.
“Scientist,” you would say and the visitor would proudly clap. But did they really clap with joy?
Because it seems more likely that the clap was sarcastic, a faint attempt to inject a dose of happiness into their own lives. To belittle the dream with sarcasm, an emotion that a child might not have picked up yet.
Doesn’t this seem to be a more plausible explanation than the contrary? Because if this adult is asking the question genuinely, they would have to be demented.
What does this middle-aged man or woman expect? A presentation?
Graphs of the marks in art and craft versus division and subtraction, followed by market trends in the next ten years and the jobs would actually exist in the future.
Good luck growing up
Humans have been competing with piano-playing cats for viewership in this decade, so who knows what this 10-year-old child would be competing with when he or she is out of college?
So much would have been taken over by software programmes, probably trained dogs, aliens might be a reality even.
"I want to be the manager of the Martian controlled Cat-sweatshop,” the child concludes after this detailed presentation. But even then, it is hard to imagine an adult being faintly interested.
They already know what the future holds. Whether this child becomes a scientist or a Martian-Cat Manager, there is only one thing that is for certain.
That he or she would struggle against the world telling them who they are and what’s not possible.
If your mother walks up to you and says the words "I am so proud of you", your first response would be to wonder if she is dying, planning to remove your name from the will or that she is about to tell you that you are adopted. Because isn’t that the world that we actually really live in?
At one point or the other in this fabulous future, this Spiderman or Ludo-playing child is going to be inadequate.
He or she is going to be either too old or too young, too fat or too thin, too dumb or too smart, too beautiful or too ugly, too free or too dependent, to be able to achieve their dreams.
Because for every dream they would have there would be a person waiting out there with an adjective to explain why it is unrealistic. So why the charade?
Why bother asking this question at all if we are not prepared to have an honest conversation about the future with our children?
It’s all for pleasure. A subtle version of Schadenfreude, where the misfortune is not immediate, nonetheless fully expected in the future.
And the pleasure is derived from talking about this probable future, constantly.
Imagine the scenario again.
“Scientist,” says the child and as the visitor claps with glee, his/her mind immediately receives a small dose of adrenaline.
As the facial muscles contort to flash a toothy smile, the mind screams out loud with laughter at the child’s optimism.
“You are never going to be a scientist, you moron. You are just going to teach science to school kids, struggle with bills and be disappointed in how your life turned out,” it would say.
And then the mouth opens up, the tongue rolls and the words “Cute kid” come out.
We are, after all, a selfish race who exist for pleasure, irrespective of what we might destroy for it. Ask Earth.
We ask others to procreate, so we might derive some pleasure from them. We ask others to get married, if we are in a terrible marriage.
To have a child, if we are having trouble with ours. To buy a house, when our EMIs are leading us to the brink of desperation. The list is endless.
But we don’t want to believe that this is the truth, do we? Because if this is the reality then why would we ever have children?
Perpetuating life won’t make sense. And the thought of eating ice-cream after dinner while watching a reality dance show won’t bring us any solace at all.
So don’t believe the reason. You are a human being after all. You can choose to believe whatever you want.
But if you ever meet a child, control your instinct to ask, "What you want to be when you grow up?"
Instead ask, "What would you like to do today?"