I remember being in the grocery store when my daughter was just a few weeks old. She was in my shopping cart, safely tucked in her baby carrier, facing me with her eyes wide open - as they so often were- as I pushed the cart through the aisles gathering my groceries.  I’d chat with her as we went up and down the aisles and occasionally, when I’d stopped to consider something, I’d ask her what she thought “Do you think we need more pasta” “Maybe I should make soup…what do you think?” speaking to her in normal tones as I would any other fellow human being. (respect, no expectations, modeling connection).

On this day back in 1997, I clearly recall the attitude of the man who turned around from the other side of the aisle and asked me- rather indignantly- “who are you talking to?”. I have no idea whether or not he noticed there was a baby in my cart, but what was clear was I had disturbed him and, that either he thought I was crazy (keep in mind this was before bluetooth or cell phones)  or that I had no business “talking to a baby” . I felt the mama bear effect rising in me and an indignance to rival his own and, although I felt like reading him the riot act on “babyism” and asking him WHO do you think YOU are talking to? Instead, I calmly told him that I was speaking to my daughter.

For the most part, when we were babies, the adults in our orbit barely spoke directly to us. They’d either speak “at us” or more often about us and even when they did speak directly to us it’d be in the third person. “oh isn’t she pretty”, “he’s such a strong clever boy”.

At social gatherings, they would peer down at us as they spoke about us to others, assuming that we couldn’t understand - like foreigners who don’t speak the language.  What they neglected to realize though, was that as babies ,uninhibited by language, we were more open and free than ever to engage without filters. We listened to and noticed everything. We sensed feelings and felt emotions, and could read attitude and energy. We considered everything around us an opportunity to learn and we would feel things or try things on, rather than trying to make sense out of them as adults so often do.

Did you know that when babies are just three to four months old, they can pick out image differences that adults never notice because they’ve already deemed them as insignificant? Or that at 4 or 5 months, infants can recognize the consonants and vowels of all languages on Earth and they can hear the difference between foreign language sounds that elude most adults? But reports say that after the age of five months, we begin to lose our super-sight abilities. 

As we got a little bit older, the way adults engaged with us felt less formative and more “performative”. Whether it was our parents wanting to show us off, “Sammy show your grandmother how you can sing/jump/do your abc's'' or a relative or family friend that wanted to be the first to get us to say or do something and then report it (often still in the third person I might add) “Look! Susie’s really good at ….” you get the idea.

And so, in our formative years we performed instead. Like beloved pets we “delighted and impressed them with our accomplishments, our wit, our talent and  beauty. And it worked - the rewards were rich. We felt loved and accepted and so we attached meaning to these encounters. 

The adults in our life were the first ones to assign labels to who we are in order that they might understand us “she’s shy, ‘He’s spirited”....”she’s slow”and because we were children, we accepted those labels as part of us because the people that were labeling us were the very same ones that were keeping us alive. And so we stopped looking to discover who we actually were and our limiting beliefs were born.

There was a glimpse of the rebellious teenager in us in those early years. When we learned that to exercise one of our favorite words which was no. Sometimes we said no not because we didn’t want something but because we felt saying no was the only thing that felt like we had any control over.

And, around 5 or so when we finally learned to speak, the first conversations that the adults in our life would have with us would be around the question of what do you want to be when you grow up?

Sometimes some of us took this as an opportunity to dream but most of the time we felt like we should know the answer already. And so we created answers that made the people we loved and relied on smile or laugh or brag about how clever we were, searching for the answer that would elicit a response that made us (ergo them) feel safe. The pride on their faces when we said things they could understand or repeat at a cocktail party like “I want to be a doctor, lawyer, teacher” was in stark contrast to the fear that registered when we said something that was foreign to them or sounded unattainable or flighty . Worse yet, when we floated an actual dream we had “I want to be a rockstar, a dancer, an astronaut  etc..” they’d be so supportive that it felt more like an obligation overblowing it with enthusiasm followed by an avalanche of “support” that filled up our schedules with classes, auditions, competitions and platitudes about hard work.

So it goes that while for a brief time we were living a life of infinite possibilities (we can be anything we want to be) all the things we thought we could be turned into should be, which I like to say is could with shame. I should do it because they want me to, because I can, because I said I would and so on.

And eventually we find ourselves as adults doing all the things but not taking the time to ask ourselves why. 

The good news is it is never too late to ask yourself that most important follow up question that is so often omitted when we are first asked “What do you want to be when you grow up?”.  Your WHY is your inner compass and exactly where your values reside. So take a moment and ask yourself WHO you want to be and WHY that is important to you. The answer is there,if you listen. No words required. 

I’m Lisa Hopkins, thanks so much for listening. Stay safe and healthy everyone and remember to live in the moment.