So you've won the lottery

Young people are often hounded by the question about what they'll do when they grow up, in the same manner I'm sure that young women are peppered with the "married yet?" question. I smile when I hear either question as the recipient has no doubt put some real efforts into trying to resolve the question, and the asking of it can't be anything less than infuriating. "Ahh, I hadn't considered this before, but now that you've mentioned it, I can now begin to focus on my answer...thanks!"

My own approach to this has evolved in recent years, and I like to offer the 'lottery win alternative' to this type of question. This is where people are challenged to think of what they'd do with their time when/if they were to win the lottery. If money was no object, and your time was your own, what would you spend your time doing? Think beyond the mansion and fancy cars and paying off the college debt thoughts, and focus instead on what you want to spend your time doing. This in itself is often enough to cause anxiety in the person asked, as they might not have considered this before. After all, how much time can you spend on a beach, or playing golf or generally lazing around before you'd want to do something to get your brain & body a little active again. I've read about the feeling of intellectual decay that new mothers go through, where their only contact is their newly born little one, and how they say that their brains revert to the same mush that the baby eats.

The lottery win question is another way of asking what you want to do of course, but it frees you up to focus on the 'want' part of the question, and less on the need part that goes verbally unsaid. The point of the question is to have people vocalize their passions and then try to do something about that. If I was thrilled with the promise of discovery that paleontologists get, should I quit my day job and go get myself a scraping brush, ancient rocks and a couple courses on how to find fossils...maybe. Because I know I'll never experience that thrill of discovery that might be my passion if I sit behind a desk, or continue to do what I need to do to eat/live.

My point is this - the choices we face are often simple and we don't look at them that way. Would you rather follow your heart and perhaps struggle in economic ways, but be fulfilled from trying to be a dancer/artist/rock digger...or would you rather have a feeling of comfort economically, and be dulled and unfilled. Power to you if you get both - that's a great result. But if you had to choose, not knowing the outcome, what would you select ?