the chloroform of the anthropocentric.......

 

     You can be anything you want to be.

     No, you can't.

     Not from your old mind's knowing.  You weren't born to be anything you want; you were born to be something quite specific.  There is a spiritual directive to your life that was assigned somewhere else before you were even born.  There's a vocation to your years, even if they appear unremarkable to the rest of us.  This is not a status-driven affair.  This is a soul coaxed into listening.  To be 'anything you want' is part of the chloroform of the anthropocentric, the usual empirical ambition dished out from toddlerhood to many of us.  That doesn't mean you don't stretch and grow as you age, but that you build on an essential, not societal, sense of vocation.

-Martin Shaw, Smoke Hole: Looking to the Wild in the Time of the Spyglass