"Hook met the accusation with a jaunty shrug. 'Not I. You yourself. The moment a child answers the question 'What do you want to be when you grow up?' he is halfway to being an adult. He has betrayed childhood and Looked Ahead. He has joined the rank of those clerks and chicken-pluckers and box-packers who scan the Situations Vacant column in the newspapers."
Curse those teachers who demand that you choose a profession in kindergarten. Curse those admissions counselors who make you declare a major. And those professors who ask you to write papers on your own personal mission statement? Make them walk the plank. In my fairy tale, they are the Captain James Hook. They are the robbers of childhood and imagination.
Perhaps they thought that by robbing us of our imagination and instilling good sense and responsibility, we could make the world a better place. But, it turns out that sense of responsibility is what drives us to take jobs as chicken-pluckers and travel agents and retaill clerks and box-packers. Maybe we still have that imagination and that sense of adventure. But, everyday we get up and make our way to our less than desirable jobs, we are forced to supress our inner Pan in favor of paying the rent.
These professors and admission counselors probably thought their plan was foolproof, but it turns out, it's acutally imagination and that sense of Peter Pan-ian adventure that will make the world a better place. It's going to take a few Peter Pans to solve the world's biggest problems. That common sense and concern for responsibility only brings about the concern for the bottom line and concrete facts. And quote all the statistics you want, and the Captain Hooks of the world certainly do, but that's not going to save the world.
It's true. We have no fairy dust. But, Pan said, "to live would be an awfully big adventure." And, I'm thinking to live life as an adventure is a far better alternative to living a life concerned with the bottom line.
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