What our dreams say

In a perfect world, who would you be?

When you’re a kid, you get asked this particular question many times. It may vary in form, but it is a constant. Adults ask, because sometimes they don’t really know anything else to talk about, and the answers vary so much it’s crazy.

I have asked this question a few times myself, and the answers varied. There were the typical children who wanted to be football players, and the three-year-olds who still hadn’t understood that magic isn’t real and wanted to be fairies. My little brother said for months that all he wanted was to grow a beard so he could be “a wise man”.

Kids want to be lawyers, teachers, doctors, paleontologists. Some don’t know what they want to be, but whatever answer they give still gives us a lot of information about their mental health. Even a refusal works.

Here’s an example:

When I was eleven years old, my English teacher organized a game. During the next day’s class, we wouldn’t be schoolgirls anymore. Each of us would get to do whatever job we wanted, and we had to act as if we were in a city of our own. The idea was to get us to speak English amongst ourselves, and make us think quickly and lose our fear of talking in a foreign language.

The rest of the day and the following morning, the class was buzzing with excitement. The girl who wanted to be a pilot had been recruiting passengers since that English class. The girl who was going to have a shop brought trinkets and drawings to “sell”. Those who weren’t sure of what they wanted to be joined other people’s groups. After all, it was just a game, right? We didn’t have to give a truthful answer. By the time English class came up, everyone had a plan for what they were going to do.

Well, almost everyone.

The second our teacher finished explaining the game, my brain started going a million miles an hour. My teacher had asked me a question, and I didn’t know the answer to it. In my already sick mind, not knowing the answer to a question meant I was doing something wrong.

If I could be anything in the world, what would I want to be? The only answer that came to mind was alone. I didn’t want to be anything, I just wanted to not have to spend an entire hour talking to my classmates. I wanted to curl up in a ball and not be out in the open. I didn’t want to be an adult and do things, because I didn’t know how that worked, and finding out sounded scary.

What could I do? I still had to attend the class, and I needed an answer. I couldn’t ask anyone for help, it would be embarrassing. I couldn’t not know how to play a game, I was eleven years old! I could pick out a career by myself, couldn’t I?

As it turns out, I couldn’t. I pondered the subject all night, but all the answers I came up with felt wrong. I couldn’t be a teacher, because that was cliché and cringy and I was sure that my classmates would laugh at me. I couldn’t be a pilot, because somebody else was going to be, and she’d get mad at me and yell at me, and it’d be awful. I couldn’t pick, because every idea was wrong, and none of them was safe, and what if I made the wrong choice and then I had to back away?

Every hour that passed, I was more scared that everyone would laugh at me and know I was lying. I don’t remember sleeping much that night.

I the end, there was only one option that, even though it scared me to death, didn’t make me want to throw up, so when the English teacher took us to the playground and told us to conquer our city, I picked up three books and declared myself a schoolgirl. And when the others started playing, I left to the corner of the playground and tried not to think of the fact that everyone could see me, and that someone might approach me and try to talk. Nobody did, and I didn’t know if I was relieved or sad about it.

Obviously, as I’m writing this I know that, way before then, I’d started struggling with  severe anxiety and depression, but I only came to that conclusion much later. Back then, I was only scared and confused. It didn’t occur to me that this wasn’t a normal reaction. Now, I’m left to wonder if anybody noticed that I was acting strangely.

Let’s review the situation from another angle.

What did my teacher see? After all, she couldn’t exactly read my mind and see what I was so scared of. She didn’t see me losing sleep over her innocent game.

But here’s what she did see. She saw a child who excluded herself from an hour of playing and stuck to the far end of the playground, where nobody would go. Someone who, despite bringing books with her, didn’t open them and instead stood frozen, watching the others. A little girl who, when presented with the opportunity of everything, chose to stay as she was.

The first two points are already concerning, but it’s the third one that I’m talking about today.

If you could be anything, would you still choose to be yourself? If an adult answers this question with a yes, we can interpret it in a number of ways. Maybe they’re contempt with their lives, or they’re happy. Perhaps it’s a sign of an underlining problem, but it’s not the only possibility, and certainly not the most plausible one.

Children, on the other hand, have every possibility they want, and they know it. They can set on any path they choose, and that’s why most of the time, when you ask a kid what they want to be when they grow up, you get the most bizarre answers. But what happens when they retreat from those opportunities? Is it because they just want to have fun forever, and that’s why they don’t want a job? That’s easy to find out with just a couple of questions.

And if that’s not the case? If they want to stay as they are because they’re scared of the unknown? If they don’t choose something else because they don’t dare to dream? Either of these reasons are a call for help, and they aren’t hard to spot. A few follow-up questions should let you know if the child just doesn’t like the idea of holding down a job, or if they’re actually scared. Maybe they just need some encouragement, or perhaps there’s a bigger issue underneath, but either way it is a problem, and they need help.

Deep down, all children have aspirations. The difference is which ones don’t feel safe enough in their environment to share them with others. If they’re too scared to do it, there’s your sign. Something as small as this question might be the piece of evidence you need to take action and step in before it’s too late. Please, don’t let it pass.