WHO do you want to be when you grow up?

The imperative I’ve struggled with most might be: “Tell me about yourself.”

I can think of plenty of ways to answer. But the crux of this inquiry doesn’t seem to be about whether I’m a devotee of New London’s steak-and-cheese sandwiches or whether I always carry around a bunny keychain named Dilbert. Instead, what the curious seem to want to know, more than who we are in an abstract sense, is what we do — and what we anticipate doing into adulthood. 

But what if we don’t yet fully have a grasp on our identity and future plans? We may be on the cusp of “adulthood,” but there is little biological basis for our societal notion of when we become adults in terms of how it corresponds to full maturity.

Still, far before college and job interviews, aunts, teachers, and babysitters will eye the Lego houses, police officer figurines, and plastic stethoscopes clasped in a toddler’s chubby hands and ask, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

I applaud those who have had a clear answer in their mind from a young age. But I’ve always found these questions perplexing and slightly unsettling. I wonder if I’m supposed to give a half-truth instead of admitting my lingering uncertainty. What does our eagerness for these answers reveal about how others in society — and we ourselves — come to perceive our identities and worth?

Whither the in-between?

Perhaps our tendency to ask these questions reflects a culture so preoccupied with beginnings and endings that we lose sight of the in-between. 

College and establishing one’s job are among life’s significant transition moments. Conventionally, getting into college often marks not only the end of high school but the culmination of years of education since kindergarten or even younger. It’s also the start of another four years of school (and of the infamous “senior slide”). And although college might be deemed “a time to explore,” asking what you’re supposed to explore quickly uncovers the next stage in the lineup: the workforce. (Or attending grad school before that if you still can’t get enough of sleep deprivation and drama with both classmates and teachers.) 

Of course, plenty of people choose to pursue paths other than the higher education-to-workforce pipeline. Still, this typical progression and the turning points it highlights ingrain in emerging generations a paradigm that what matters is the end result, not the process. 

And this blurred focus is inextricably tied up with our capacity to discover happiness. 

The second semester of senior year is meant to be a long-anticipated sigh of relief to celebrate the end of the chaos of applying to college. But from another angle, it seems to reveal that only when our perspectives are no longer clouded by the perpetually looming thought of college can we spend greater time on what has made us happiest all along. 

‘Soft’ or ‘hustle’ culture?

Designating happiness as a secondary priority might also find its way beyond college application season. One survey found that even as older Americans’ preferences are shifting toward a “soft culture” that prioritizes happiness and fulfillment, more than half of Gen Z youth still believe in the “hustle culture,” which prioritizes wealth, status and achievement. But it shouldn’t take us until it’s nearly too late to realize that we’ve spent so much of our lives seeking these status markers. 

Much of the issue with this trade-off of sacrificing supposed short-term happiness for long-term “success” is due to systemic weaknesses in America’s educational and economic systems. Realistically, adults can’t stop caring about providing for themselves and their families, nor can high schoolers stop caring about college admissions. 

But even faced with structures beyond our control, maybe we can still strive to make space for ourselves to avoid further regret at unpleasant realizations of the unpleasant choices we’ve forced on ourselves. 

What if we tried to treat each tiny spark of happiness in everyday life — a good play in a sports game, a shared joke with a classmate or co-worker, a particularly satisfying snack — to be as tangible and as significant as the “bigger” moments? Learning to find joy in the journey might sound trite, but it also seems ever more relevant as youth — among other demographics — increasingly waver with misgivings about the purpose of life. 

Such an outlook certainly doesn’t mean we have to love every second of the journey. But maybe it starts with recognizing that if we’re going to spend an otherwise scenic road trip just counting the landmark signs we pass, we might as well not travel at all.

Maybe we need to feel more comfortable answering, “I’m figuring out what makes me happy.”

The author is a rising Harvard first-year.