Who Do You Want To Be?

on dreams, identity, and the quiet courage of just being

When I was little, the question was always the same.

“What do you want to be when you grow up?”

I answered it with a kind of confident fantasy—ballerina, psychologist, screenwriter, to name a few. It changed often. I never really knew. I still don’t know if I’ve “grown up,” and I still want to be many things. A better mother. A braver writer. A more patient friend. A beginner again, in something. Something joyful. Something hard.

But here’s the truth no one really says when you’re young and dreaming:
Dreaming is a privilege. A wild, shining, rare gift.

I learned that in war zones, in conflict corridors, in places where the earth cracked and dreams fell into the gaps. Places where most people are not thinking about what they want to be. They are simply trying to be. To survive. To make it to nightfall without a bomb dropping, to find clean water, to birth a baby without dying in the process. To get through one more day with dignity intact.

In much of the world, dreaming is not a rite of passage. It's a luxury.
And if you are lucky enough to dream, you should. But lately, I’ve been circling another idea: the trap of tying our dreams—and our worth—too tightly to our work.

I love what I do. Truly. I love the writing, the interviews in places most people never see, the way stories stitch the world together. Even when it’s hard. Even when I’m questioning everything, worried that in pursuing my heart instead of 401k and salaries and safety nets I am letting others around me down.

Being an independent writer in far-flung places doesn’t get me the things I was taught I should want. The house, the big job title, the certainty. However, I didn’t come into this life for the ladder. I came for the meaning. For the chance to witness, to feel, to record something true.

But my work, irrespective of what it is, doesn’t define me.

Still, I struggle in places like Washington D.C., where so much of who you are is boiled down to what you do. Where you’re only valuable to someone if you’re useful to them. I’ve felt the same in L.A., in elite rooms with pretty people where eyes dart past you, searching for someone shinier. (And I am certainly much less useful to people now than I was when I worked for a big corporation.)

There is a hollowness in those spaces that I can’t unfeel. And a grief in watching people define their entire sense of self by a LinkedIn headline or a dinner party introduction.

What will it take for us to truly love our work, but not become it?

Now that I have a daughter, I think about that question a lot. I hesitate when I wonder if I should, at some point when she is older, ask her what she wants to be when she grows up. Not because I don’t want her to dream—but because I want her to understand that her value is not tied to a profession. That her becoming will not be a job title, but a set of values. That who she is will always matter more than what she does.

Because the real question—the better question—is not "What do you want to be?"

It’s:

Who do you want to be?

To that, I say:
Be generous. Be honest. Be humble. Be brave.
Be someone who listens deeply, laughs loudly, loves wildly.
Be someone of character. Of grace. Of integrity.
Be someone whose life is not just busy but meaningful.

Because one day the work will change, or stop. The spotlight will dim. The invitations will slow.
But who you are—that remains. That’s the real legacy.
That’s the dream worth growing into.

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