大象传媒

A spiritual comment and prayer to start the day with Rabbi Julia Neuberger

Good morning.
When I grow up, I used to say, I want to be a ballerina. Now if you鈥檇 seen me dance as a child, you鈥檇 know that was ridiculous. I must be the only person in the country who couldn鈥檛 pass Grade 1 ballet. But a couple of weeks ago, I was with some five year olds, whose ambitions were very different. One wanted to drive a cherry picker. I can see the attraction, getting to all those places it鈥檚 impossible to reach otherwise. Another wanted to be an AI engineer. A third wanted to be an astronomer. And a fourth a physicist. Where are the innocent days of wanting to be an engine driver or a fireman? Or has something happened that makes these 5 year olds both more ambitious, and more realistic? The would be astronomer told me she needed to be very very VERY good at maths. The would be cherry picker driver told me he was developing a head for heights. The AI engineer spent half an hour showing me how to look things up on Chat GPT. And the physicist didn鈥檛 really speak, but was concentrating hard on working out how electrical circuits worked.

Are these five year olds a completely new breed? Or have there always been truly ambitious young children, thinking about their aims from when they were tiny, like Mozart? I鈥榤 not sure, but I was astonished, and moved, by the seriousness of their ambition and their determination. It gave me real hope in a younger generation who are thinking about how to be useful in the wider world. From a very young age. And that, surely, is something we should be grateful for.