Not everyone can be anything, but that’s okay

When you’re little, you hear it all the time. “You can be anything you want to be when you grow up!” Well, I’m here to tell you, as I’m certainly almost done growing up, that sentiment is a delusion of grandeur.

Not everyone can be anything, and that’s okay!

Now, let me not discredit the lucky few who are “Jacks of all trades,” because there are certainly some people who master several crafts or topics or have several unique abilities. The catch to that, though, is the full phrase. “Jack of all trades, master of none.”

I’m also not trying to pop any bubbles or rain on any parades here but rather trying to be realistic. Everyone has strengths and weaknesses, and simply ignoring your shortcomings in search of a greater purpose is irresponsible.

I graduated high school almost four years ago now, and at graduation, we all had to say what our aspirations were. I swear to you, like three people said they wanted to be brain surgeons. I still see what they’re up to on social media, and I’m not sure I’d even trust them to put a Band-Aid on me.

I’ll be honest, I can’t find any of them on LinkedIn either.

Can it be done? Absolutely! Reaching your ambitions is, in large part, having and acting on ambition.

I feel like a lot of people, especially those currently in college, struggle to find what motivates them and what they’re passionate about. Instead, they jump into something that’s “cool” or “easy” or “will make a lot of money,” and end up ill-equipped for the work that goes into it. I have a few inklings as to why, like influencers or the lack of diversity in school curriculum.

There is the separate issue of laziness. Success takes effort, too. You can’t just believe you have a passion for something and never act on it; it doesn’t work that way. That’s like believing you’re hungry and just expecting food to land in your lap, or like believing you’re cold and expecting to magically become warm. You mustput in the effort to make or buy the food, you needto shiver to get warm, or you need to get a heater or a blanket.

Rather than thinking we can be anything we want, we should focus on how we can do anything we set our minds to.

I’ve been down a lot of avenues and tried a lot of things. I had ambitions to be a grant writer because it’s easy and makes a lot of money. Let me tell you, after taking the class and securing the internship and doing the internship for half a year, I assuredly never want to see a grant application, write a letter of intent, inspect a W-9 form or scrutinize a project budget ever again.

Could I do it if I set my mind to it? Yes, and I know this because I put in the effort to try it. However, I’m missing the passion and ambition. See, they’re not mutually exclusive.

I can’t be anything, and that's okay!

It’s also okay to admit when you were wrong and to back up and try something else. Too often I talk to people in their senior year of college who regret the major they chose but think it’s “too late” to change now. This is the rest of your life; you can’t be anything, but you can put in effort to do something you’re actually passionate about.