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Comment by ljlolel | Hacker News Reader

Not to criticize you but just in general: does it make sense to live up to a desire dreamed up by a 4-year-old. Is it more pure? Or just naive? Why is it any better than something that an adult or present you wants? In what ways can it be worse to be dictated by a child?

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When I was four years old I wanted to be a Ninja Turtle when I grew up, so I may not be the best "former four year old" to ask. Disclaimer: I didn't grow up to be a Ninja Turtle. I didn't even become a Ninja, or a Turtle. Absolute failure to live up to my four year old dreams

But when I was a bit older I knew "I want to do something with computers", because my family had a windows 3.1 computer and I liked to play games on it. Of course at the time I had no idea what anyone even did with computers. I also had no idea that in the future every single job that exists would be "something to do with computers"

I started taking computer classes in high school which got me into programming, because I wanted to make games. This is a pretty common pipeline for Millennial programmers I think

After that I went to a local university and took Computer Science. Luckily I was just dumb enough to stick with it the whole time and get a bachelors. I say dumb enough somewhat ironically. Obviously doing a BSc in Compsci takes a bit of smarts, but I had friends who became convinced they were too smart to bother with a degree, and all of them who dropped out to pursue their own path without the degree are much worse off than I am now

Anyways, after my degree I no longer wanted to work in games. I wanted to work in embedded systems. Turns out there weren't many opportunities to work in embedded systems in my local market so I got into web dev. Like I said, not my dream job, but I'm very good at it and it has been a really successful career.

So I guess to summarize:

Yes I was pretty lucky to somewhat choose a direction when I was young, even if I didn't know more than "work with computers".

However the dream path still wasn't exactly a straightforward arrow from Ninja Turtle to Web Dev. At every single step it felt like I was compromising on my dreams.

Turns out that compromise can be really good though

  I didn't grow up to be a Ninja Turtle

Have you ever eaten new york style pizza in a subway wearing cool colored clothes? You might be closer than you think..

Unfortunately no

Although I may have to make a point of this sometime now, just for kicks

I just wanted to be a turtle. Should've aimed a little higher I suppose.

In a way this is a tension between an individual and society. Children dream of big impossible things, while archetypical grown-ups just want a paycheck and a house, with a few weeks of vacation. The extent to which we abandon childhood dreams is an indicator of how much we were crushed by society (or "real world").

Carl Jung investigated this with his "puer-aeternus" (the child that was promised) and "senex" (old man) archetypes. A really interesting read, if you have time for that. In essence I think he advocated a balance, where one starts at childhood, becomes a cynical grown-up and then re-integrates his childhood fantasies back into his character, but now in a less naive and wiser way.

> Children dream of big impossible things

That's cultural bias right there. It happens only if you tell them to dream impossible big things. If you don't teach children that astronauts exist, they will likely dream to become their teacher or the janitor at school, especially the friendly, nice ones.

I won't do a better job defending Jung's ideas than the man himself in his works, but just as a friendly reply: yes, but according to Jungs theories - these are archetypes - meaning all people have a combination of one _and_ the other. There might be people who refuse to grow up and stay in a kind of perpetual childhood with a failure-to-launch and never finishing their own projects (a good book about that is "The problem of puer aeternus"), and there are also children that grow up too quickly and start being cynical and sarcastic with a know-it-all attitude, and belief that nothing is worth doing and the world is going to shit. The actual human beings are a combination of those archetypes. So an astronaut is a cultural input, in the same way that saying that you have two hands is a cultural input, but what is different is the inner attitude - do you see a lot of potential to the point that you cannot make a decision between several choices, or do you see barriers and feel a loss of meaning. Again, a healthy combination is "best".

4 year old me couldn't wait to grow up so that I could have a red sports bike and a hot girlfriend.

I now have red sport-touring bike and a beautiful wife so, mission accomplished?

Depends, do you also have the hot girlfriend?

Four-year old you wanted a hot girlfriend?

Yes. I just wanted to be a scientist when I was four years old. Real life happened and graduate school has not managed to come around yet, but it is not too late for me to go back (only 33 years old). But being a DevOps engineer is far better than some of the alternatives that could have been me. One day I will finally get to that childhood dream.

part of being is evolving... some (if not all) of the things you wanted as a child are largely influenced by your parents/surroundings/... as you move through life and make your own path I would think that I would want my path to be carved by my own experiences/desires/... and my eventual person that I am (which is ever-changing) be made of clay that is molded vs. built by bricks when I was a child

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