So when we were kids we always fantasized about what we wanted to be when we grew up. If you came across a group of kids talking with each other you might hear things like...
I want to be a doctor when I grow up.
My Uncle is an Engineer, I want to be like him when I grow up... I will have plenty money.
it was part of the discussion teachers had with their students in school.
Would you like to be a doctor, an engineer or a lawyer? Or a Banker...
Doctors and engineers, go to science class. Lawyers and Bankers, social science class. Those who wanted to do music, mass communication, they were fitted in the art class... This was how students were classified during my own time, in my owns school.. it might have been different else where.
The point is that, the gist about occupations or professions has been something ingrained in the culture scape of every society. In those days, if you wanted to get someone really pissed at you, tell him that he was no better than a "shoe maker" aka "cobbler". A civil war among students could be ignited by that word alone.
Why are you fighting...?
he called me a shoemaker.
Those are the kind of conversations you would hear when a teacher finally steps in to separate the fight.
you can imagine my surprise, my shock and amazement when someone told me what a child had recently said when she was asked what she wanted to be when she grew up.
A very modest looking teenager, about 13yrs of age, beautifully looking at that. A group of people involved in career education and student empowerment who moved from school to school had recently come to her school and they were going from class to class instead of gathering the whole school and talking to them at once...
the leader of the group said he believed that information is lost when the kids are gathered in a large number. It is easier to reach the last child in the class when speaking than to reach the last child in the assembly hall.
Naturally, this would take some time. So it was on the second day that they got to her class and in the usual manner they began to ask the children one by one what they wanted to be when they grew up...that was when she revealed that she really wanted to be a beggar.
why? everyone who was a beggar that she knew was doing better than her dad who was a civil servant. They had better houses, they had better food to eat. Her family always needed to ration their diet so that they would not stay hungry. How can a beggar be better than a civil servant?
I was walking down the road recently and I saw a beggar asking me for money and when I looked at her face, she had full make up on. I mean real full make up. How can you be begging with full make-up on?
I couldn't fathom it. Anyways, people say Philanthropy is good, being benevolent to those who cannot afford a living. But what happens when people begin to create their living around your Philanthropy, is it still philanthropy?