-Shekinah Okunbo

In preschool, I always dreaded this question: “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

Not because I lacked passions, but because I had far too many. While some kids answered quickly with “doctor” or“fireman,” I wanted to be an engineer-musician who also played soccer and painted on weekends. The question was supposed to be simple, yet it felt like being asked to choose only one ice cream flavor and eat it for the rest of my life.

As the firstborn son, my mother wanted me to learn every good life skill, and so she enrolled me in every activity she could find. Soccer on Saturdays, swimming lessons on Sundays, piano on weekdays, and painting or acting camps in between. I was grateful for the experiences, but there was a hidden downside: I couldn’t easily tell which things were hobbies and which were potential career paths. I enjoyed everything, which meant I felt pressure to pick something“sensible” when it came time to answer that dreaded question.

The first time I remember being asked formally was at “Career Day” in preschool. We had to dress up as our future selves.

When I got back home, I told my parents that I wanted to be a professional soccer player.

The response? Two loving smiles followed by a massive hug and the heartwarming statement: “Sheki, you can be anything you want to be. We support you.”

It was the most heartening response a child could receive. But by the time I got to high school, the tone had changed.When I mentioned soccer again, the answer became, “That’s not a sustainable profession.”

I stopped playing soccer like I used to because I felt bad that my passion was looked at as merely “childish”. I stopped practicing my piano. I stopped painting with the same enthusiasm.

That shift hurt, but it also revealed something important: our answers to “What do you want to be?” are shaped as much by society as by passion. In a typical Nigerian household, there are three “respectable” career tracks: doctor, lawyer, and engineer. Anything outside that triangle earns polite smiles at best and raised eyebrows at worst. Somewhere along the way, the world stopped asking me about joy and started asking me about stability.

Looking back, I see how the question itself can feel selfish. Although it makes it easy for all the jolly good fellows who have known that they wanted to code their whole life and become Software Developers, it doesn’t leave room for people who, like me, have many passions and want to chase more than one. It assumes that identity should be streamlined into a single word—a profession—rather than a mosaic of talents, curiosities, and dreams.

The truth is, having too many passions comes with both blessings and challenges. On one hand, I’ve tasted variety: the discipline of sports, the creativity of art, and the patience of music. On the other hand, I’ve wrestled with being called names like a “jack of all trades, master of none” and struggled to identify what I was truly passionate about.

At times, it gave me a mini identity crisis—was I a soccer player who made music, or a musician who played soccer?

Was I really pursuing a career, or was I juggling a multitude of hobbies?

Eventually, I realized the real issue wasn’t my indecision but the question ITSELF. Asking children, “What do you want to be?” in some sense, narrows their perspective of the world too early. It doesn’t really ask, “What do you want to learn?” or “What problems do you want to solve?” It pushes us to define ourselves by a job title rather than by curiosity, values, or the impact we want to make. No wonder so many people feel stuck: the world is still handing us samples, but we’ve been told to choose just one flavor.

Over time, I came to understand that in reality, most of the advice we receive from others comes filtered through their own experiences.

For example, when someone says, “You can’t make a living doing that,” what they often mean is, “I couldn’t,” or “I don’t know anyone who could.”

Truth is, people speak from their own fears and limitations, not universal truth. Recognizing that freed me. I understood that while it’s wise to listen, it’s also crucial to remember that each of us is walking through life for the first time. No two journeys are identical, and it’s natural that people will love different things.

So…what’s the conclusion?

For me, there isn’t one “correct” answer to the question. I may never give a tidy one-word response that makes adults nod approvingly. But maybe that’s the point. Life isn’t just about narrowing down to a single title—it’s about weaving together the threads of all the passions that make us human.

Nowadays, when asked this recurring question, I say I want to become an Electrical and Computer Engineer. However, when I grow up, I don’t want to be one thing. I want to do many things: build, create, inspire, and learn. Maybe I’ll be an engineer who still writes music, or a writer who still paints, or something entirely new that doesn’t fit on a business card. But that’s not what matters most. What matters is not that I conform to a preset list of respectable careers, but that I grow into someone who keeps chasing curiosity.

So if you ask me today what I want to be when I grow up, I’ll say this: I want to be someone who never stops exploring the many things I love.