A Noun or a Verb - who are you?

 “We are not nouns, we are verbs. I am not a thing - an actor, a writer - I am a person who does things - I write, I act - and I never know what I'm going to do next. I think you can be imprisoned if you think of yourself as a noun.”

― Stephen Fry

Oscar Wilde said that if you know what you want to be, then you inevitably become it. That is your punishment. But if you never know, then you can be anything. There is a truth to that. We are not nouns, we are verbs. I am not a thing — an actor, a writer — I am a person who does things — I write, I act — and I never know what I am going to do next. I think you can be imprisoned if you think of yourself as a noun.

~ Stephen Fry

The exact Wilde quote to which Fry was referring is this –

If you want to be a grocer, or a general, or a politician, or a judge, you will invariably become it; that is your punishment. If you never know what you want to be, if you live what some might call the dynamic life — but what I will call the artistic life — if each day you are unsure of who you are and what you know you will never become anything, and that is your reward.”

~ Oscar Wilde

A little English brush up here – ‘Noun’ is a word that names something: either a person, place, or thing. ‘Verb’ is a word that shows an action (sing), occurrence (develop), or state of being (exist).

And then this is what I read of Osho –

Life is a verb. Life is not a noun, it is really “living” not “life.” It is not love, it is loving. It is not relationship, it is relating. It is not a song, it is singing. It is not a dance, it is dancing. See the difference, savor the difference.

Why then do we force or shape our children to be Nouns?