How the innocence of childhood is lost

There is another more subtle way in which the innocence of childhood is lost: when the child is infected with the desire to become somebody. Contemplate the crowds of people who are striving might and main to become, not what Nature intended them to be - musicians, cooks, mechanics, carpenters, gardeners, inventors - but somebody: to become successful, famous, powerful; to become something that will bring, not quiet and self-fulfillment, but
self-glorification and self-expansion.

Anthony de Mello, SJ
The Way to Love