Dare to Matter

We are all something, but none of us is everything.

— BLAISE PASCAL

What do you want to be when you grow up?

Do you remember when you first heard this question? How old were you? Who asked? How did you respond?

From the moment we're old enough to carry on basic polysyllabic conversations, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" is the go-to icebreaker topic when grown-ups talk to kids. Chances are that before you could read, count to ten, or tie your shoelaces, people wanted to know what you wanted to be — meaning, what you wanted to do for a living.

I was in the second grade the first time I recall being asked the question, and I replied in the remarkably unremarkable way lots of kids do at that age. What did I want to be when I grew up? That was easy: a fireman. Firemen had everything you could possibly want in a job: a cool car with flashing lights and sirens, which you could drive as fast as you wanted; cool gadgets; cool uniforms; and you got to be a hero.

But as time marched on and I started to understand what firemen really had to do to earn the cool gear and hero status, I came to the sober realization that I didn't have what it would take to be a first responder. I also had embraced the fact that rocketing to earth from a distant planet, having first been endowed with special powers or being bitten by a radioactive spider, weren't things just anyone could do if they worked really hard and believed in themselves. With that, Superman and Spiderman were also off the table — my childhood dream no match for every kid's kryptonite: reality.

With high school came a more achievable career goal. What did I want to be when I grew up? A photographer for National Geographic. While I had no way of knowing for sure how solid my prospects in that field would be, at the very least I was optimistic that it was better suited to my talents and interests. And given the right training, determination, and commitment, success was within reach.

For a lucky few, the first "What do you want to be when you grow up?" answer never changes. There are people in the world who say they want to be a firefighter and who actually grow up to be a firefighter. Or a doctor. Or a chef. Or a Supreme Court justice. But for the rest of us, the answer changes and changes and changes again. And in this era when we've traded one-job-for-life gold watch retirements for second and third acts, the changes don't necessarily end in early adulthood.

The vast majority of us mere mortals do reach some turning point in our growing-up process when our circumstances and abilities insinuate themselves into our earliest childhood "What do you want to be when you grow up?" dreams. That watershed moment when what may have been an adorable answer at seven, if gone unchanged at seventeen, instead inspires sideways glances and furrowed brows in the adults who ask (parents in particular).

I think my son, Jonas, summed it up best when he addressed our synagogue community at his bar mitzvah. Gazing from the pulpit at the assembled group of friends, family, and synagogue goers — some Jewish, some of other or no religious backgrounds, Jonas said, "For those of you who are unfamiliar with this ritual, a bar mitzvah is the day in a thirteen-year-old Jewish boy's life when he realizes that he has a far better chance of owning an NBA team than playing for one."

Jonas got a big laugh, and not just because his observation was funny, but also because it was true. His words resonated with every person in that sanctuary who had ever shed a childhood dream for a grown-up truth: you can't be everything, but eventually you have to be something.

Yet when the time comes, how do you know what that something is?

Go West, Young Man?

If we're facing in the right direction, all we have to do is keep on walking. If it takes a year, or sixty years, or five lifetimes, as long as we're heading towards light, that's all that matters.

— JOSEPH GOLDSTEIN

When the time came for me to choose something, I was twenty-three and fresh out of college. "What do you want to be?" dogged me everywhere I went. Figuring it out was my central preoccupation and deep wellspring of anxiety — anxiety that was not helped by the fact that I was the only one of my friends who didn't have a plan. I was obsessed with choosing the right direction in my life; or as I thought of it, with whether to head east or go west.

As detailed by philosopher and naturalist Henry David Thoreau in his essay, "Walking," the bible of my youth, east and west aren't points on a map, but polar opposite states of being.

West is the future, while east is the past.

West is stepping boldly into the wild unknown without looking back, while east is retracing your steps to get back home.

West is setting up camp in the middle of nowhere; east is pitching a tent in your own backyard.

As someone who'd been hiking and mountain climbing since my early teens, far more at home in the great outdoors than I ever was in a classroom, whenever I read "Walking," I felt like Thoreau was speaking directly to me. But with college graduation in the rearview mirror and no strong sense of what I wanted to do with my future, a borderline manic manifesto dedicated to an existence unspoiled by commitments and basic social conventions wasn't going to cut it. I needed a plan.

It wasn't that I was completely lost. A few months before graduation, I'd been accepted to the New England College of Optometry (NECO). As the son of an optometrist, the operating assumption was that once I earned my doctor of optometry degree I would go to work for my dad in his practice.

I loved and respected my father, but the thought of being an optometrist didn't inspire me at all. It was retracing my footsteps, working just miles from the suburban New York home of my childhood, in the office I'd visited countless times on trips to the city with my dad. This was my east.

My west, on the other hand, was more in line with my passion for nature, travel, and adventure: spending a year climbing in Tibet, possibly followed by graduate school to become a tundra biologist, was the best idea I'd conjured in the way of a go-forward strategy.

Technically I'd already chosen west. I'd notified NECO that I wanted to defer admission and my plans for Tibet were partially underway. Yet while I'd made the decision, I hadn't made peace with it.

So when I set out on a two-month celebratory postgraduation trek through Alaska with my good friends, Rob and Mike, I carried a load of gear on my back and the NECO acceptance letter in my pocket.

To get to the starting point of our trek, we drove 210 miles on the Dalton Highway north of Fairbanks, parked our '78 Dodge Omni on the side of the road near the base of...