From the time we are very young until the time we are about 18 and are supposed to have finally “figured it out,” we are asked one consistent question: What do you want to be or do when you grow up?

We are always expected to have an answer at the ready.

From little boys, it is often heard: policeman, fireman, or some sort of professional sports player. From little girls we may hear: teacher, nurse, and homemaker/parent. Of course, now gender roles have blurred wonderfully so that both may be any of the above in addition to doctors, lawyers, writers, artists, and business-people. Whatever our dream may be, we are expected to have one and to pursue it.

I can tell you that as I grew up my answer went from mom to businesswoman to author to writer/editor to…some combination of each of these responses.

The last thing anyone expects is for our response to be that we don’t know what we want to do or be or, even more, to hear a laundry list of things we don’t want to do or be like Lloyd Dobbler offers his girlfriend’s father in Say Anything.

Like Mr. James Court and his friends did, the people who ask us this question look around at one another in a way that says, “Oh dear, this one is lost isn’t he? Will he ever find his way?”

The answer to both questions is yes. Yes, we may not know our direct life path from the age of 5 to the age we achieve this or that goal. However, that does not mean that we won’t find our way. And who’s to say that an answer like Lloyd’s isn’t perfectly acceptable? At the very least, it’s an honest answer to a largely generic question tossed out to fill the void of conversation when different generations or age groups are put together in one room. Would you rather a generic answer, chosen arbitrarily just to satisfy your minimal curiosity or would you rather have the truth and possibly a more stimulating conversation than a stock Q&A session? Is it not better to pursue something we want, even if we don’t know exactly what it is yet, and be happy along the journey to discovering it than to pursue something we don’t want (or that someone else wants for us) with a single-minded focus and be miserable?

Part of finding our path in life is figuring out what we don’t want to do or be, to narrow our focus, to eliminate the undesirable possibilities that don’t fit our personalities or skillsets. So why does it seem as though there is so little value attributed to this process? Is it not good and valuable to know ourselves well enough to know what will work for us or not, what we will be successful at or not? It seems to me that knowing ourselves this intimately, even if it takes a long time to find our way, will save us a considerable amount of detours, missteps, and false starts – not to mention a lot of stress and frustration.

What very few people tell us as we grow up and come to the point where we do have to start thinking about our futures more seriously and with more definitive goals is that 1) it’s okay to not know exactly what we want to do for the rest of our lives; 2) even if we have an idea of what we want, we may change our minds as we are exposed to new experiences; and 3) it’s okay to change our minds. Going through this process makes us more self-aware, more in tune with who we are, what we need, what our strengths and weaknesses are and so on. These are also all things that we are expected to know and have at the ready as we enter adulthood – just ask anyone who has ever been in an interview and been asked to list three strengths and three weaknesses and how they will make us perfect for the X, Y or Z job.

Yet, if we have spend our formative years pursuing a “dream” that isn’t our own or that is just a haphazard choice because we might, maybe, sort of be good at Math and we want to make money so we should obviously pursue a career as an accountant, will we really be doing ourselves or those around us any favors? I think not. In this instance, if we take the time to analyze what we like, what we are good at, what we are passionate about and set aside what everyone else says, we may find that we really want to be a biomedical engineer or an architect – both of which are great jobs that contribute to the world and make a decent salary.

Heck, if I had listened to the amount of people who told me that I was going to be poor and scraping by paycheck to paycheck because I chose to be an English major in college or because I was honest and said I wanted to write (even if that meant I had to work multiple jobs or work in a position unrelated to my degree and write on the side just to get by), I may have been working somewhere in a completely different field (hating it or liking it, depending what it was) or maybe I would have ended up in the same position I am from a different angle. Who knows? But I can guarantee you that I have been happier with my choices, my life path, my jobs, and myself listening to and knowing myself than I ever would have been if I had listened to all those naysayers.

Plus, if those people were honest, they’d tell us they didn’t know what they wanted to be or do at the age of 18, 22, or 35 anymore than we did, do, or will at the same ages.

Baz Luhrman said it perfectly in the Sunscreen Speech, “Don’t feel guilty if you don’t know what to do with your life…the most interesting people I know didn’t know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives, some of the most interesting 40 year olds I know still don’t.”

As always, if all else fails, my advice is to always follow your arrow.