I had the opportunity last week to visit with 126 kids, with an average age of 9, and ask each of them the question: What do you want to be when you grow up? I’ll be honest, my expectations were not high. These kids were exchanging the information for a free pass for a water slide and dunk tank, I expected whatever popped into their heads so they could get down to the business of having fun. That wasn’t the case.
Nearly every child put careful consideration into the question and the answers were impressive. The top choices were veterinarians, doctors, police officers, firefighters, teachers and engineers. Pretty much every skillset you would need to build a community. There was even a 6-year-old wanting to become a toxic waste manager and understand how people become sick; a serious thinker with serious concerns. I had a 10-year-old tell me he wanted to build and sell airplanes. I followed up by asking, what is a skill you’d like to learn that you’ve never tried? He looked at me like I was a bit dense and replied, “build a plane.” Touché.
Turns out I underestimated these kids and it made me wonder if we all do to some degree. It got me thinking about how to keep this fire burning, how to keep kids thinking and planning, and the solution I came up with is to provide them with tools. The tools can be a hammer but it can also be a paint brush, a book, a lump of clay or an experience. It’s not a single person’s job, it’s up to all of us to feed these community builders, these excited young minds. This isn’t a chore, it’s something we get to do, something we should all be excited about contributing to. After all, when they succeed, we will all reap the rewards of better communities for us all.
