When I was a youngling, new to the world and its joys, my brother turned to me and told me what he would be when he grew up. He was, naturally, going to be a soldier and a hero, and fight to protect me and the whole family. Quite a noble aspiration for a boy of 9 (and one he actually achieved 20 years later).

But then he turned to me, a child at the tender age of 5, and asked me what it was I wanted to be. One might expect a child so young, who has only seen a fraction of the world, to not be sure what career to pursue later in life. But not me. I knew exactly what I wanted.

When I grew up, I was going to be a lion.

"You can't be a lion! Mom, tell her she can't be a lion!"

But that's not what my mother said. "She can be a lion if she wants to." Beaming with pride at the prospect of my awesome future career, I spent the rest of the day communicating via roar.

Of course, I was only five and perhaps a little misguided. As I grew older my eyes were opened to the world: lions were noble beasts, but mayhaps an inpractical career choice. It might, after all, be more prudent to be a bat or a raccoon. Perhaps, if I were to be particularly ambitious, I could be a dragon.

And on the playground, I was all these things, and my friends frequently shared these things with me. That is until we hit the preteen years, and suddenly nobody wanted to be lions or dragons at all. It would be embarrassing. What if that cute guy in class saw us acting like that? What if nobody invited us to parties? We must stop acting like children!

How silly, I thought, Why would we be concerned about what these people thought? But they cared. They became different people then. They wore what everyone else told them to wear. They watched what everyone told them to watch. And they most certainly, absolutely, never ever tried to be something everyone told them they couldn't or shouldn't be!

Needless to say, I spent most of my teenage years as a thoroughly confused loner.

"But surely you've realized by now that you can't really be a lion."

And why not? Lions are brave. Lions take pride in themselves. Lions don't need anyone else to tell them how good they are. Lions just are. And most importantly, lions don't care so much about what everyone else thinks. Lions live how they want to live; not how everyone else tells them they should live.

I'm not five anymore.

But I still dream, every day, that I can be a lion.