I don't understand why grownups ask kids such a complicated question. How do they expect someone who can barely build Lego blocks to plan a future. I am almost 32 years old and I haven't figured that out yet!

When I was little, my dad used to ask me this same question expecting a predictable answer,  something like "teacher" or "doctor"... but my answer always was: "I want to become a belly dancer". My dad is a very traditional man, and having a belly dancing career was out of question. Like most Arabs (or should I say Phoenicians), he associated belly dancers with prostitutes. For him, learning any type of arts was a waste of time. Remarking how serious I was about my future plans, he forbade me from dancing at home... I had to slip away from home and go to my grandmother's house where I could dance freely in front of her large bedroom mirror... I didn't improve my dancing skills to become a professional dancer but I certainly developed the needed curves...

My nephew was four years old when I playfully asked him this same question expecting something along the lines of "I wanna be like daddy"... Instead he uttered: "Nothing, I wanna stay home"... His lack of ambition didn't come as a shock. To the contrary, I was relieved and glad that he didn't want to become an engineer... or a manager!

Half of the Lebanese population is made up of Engineers... The majority of them loathes their profession (some of them prefer belly dancing to civil and mechanic works) but were pressured by their parents and society to go to Engineering school. It is a matter of pride and prestige, because "my daughter married an Engineer" would resonate better than "my son married a belly dancer"... But I am confident that with time, people will actually prefer "my son married an artist" to "my daughter married an unemployed Engineer". The other half of the population is made up of managers... Those are usually the less talented and fortunate who failed the engineering placement test but who still aspire to get some kind of social recognition.

Few days ago, I was filling a loan application, when my banker asked me to write down my profession. I bustled trying to explain what I did for a living. As she struggled to understand (because I was far from being an engineer), she desperately exclaimed: "So you're a manager, aren't you?" I wanted to give her the impression that I was eligible for the loan and that I made enough money to repay it and so I replied: "No... I am a belly dancer!"