I recently read that Christine Lagarde, the president of the European Central Bank, had announced she would be stepping down from her position in February 2027. At 70, she has enjoyed what can only be described as an extraordinary career. She was the first woman to lead the international law firm Baker McKenzie, the first woman to become managing director of the International Monetary Fund, and the first female president of the European Central Bank. Somewhere in between, she was also the French finance minister during the global financial crisis.

Not a bad résumé for someone who started out as a lawyer.

I found myself thinking about her long after I’d finished reading the article. Not so much about her achievements, although they are remarkable, but about the woman behind them. I wondered whether she’d imagined any of this when she was younger. Whether she’d ever had moments when she questioned her decisions, worried about what she was doing, or wondered whether she was up to the job. Whether there were things she’d wanted to do but couldn’t, opportunities she’d declined, or parts of her life that didn’t quite turn out as expected.

We tend to tell the stories of extraordinary people through their achievements. We identify the milestones, join them together, and create a narrative that makes their success appear almost inevitable. But that’s not how life happens, is it? We live somewhere between those milestones, in all the ordinary and sometimes rather messy moments that rarely make it into a biography.

I was also rather taken with the idea that here was a woman of 70 and people were still wondering what she might do next. There was something wonderfully liberating about that. At an age when we’re often encouraged to slow down, step aside, or contemplate retirement, Christine Lagarde was once again making a decision about the next chapter of her life. And what that chapter might look like was still an open question.

And then I learned about Jonny Kim.

Now, if you haven’t heard of Jonny Kim, his career makes for rather extraordinary reading. He served as a US Navy SEAL, went on to study medicine at Harvard, became a doctor, trained as a NASA astronaut, and spent eight months aboard the International Space Station. Having accomplished all that, he left NASA in 2026 to return to military service.

I mean, really. Some of us are quite pleased with ourselves if we’ve managed to get through the washing, answer our emails, and remember what we went into the kitchen for.

But it was the combination of these two stories that got me thinking. Christine Lagarde and Jonny Kim have led very different lives, yet both have moved through careers and experiences that most of us would regard as entirely separate identities. Lawyer. Politician. International financial leader. Soldier. Doctor. Astronaut.

And I found myself wondering: What if we’re not meant to become just one thing?

It’s a curious question when you think about it, because from a very young age we’re encouraged to decide exactly that.

“What do you want to be when you grow up?”

It’s one of the first questions adults ask children, usually with the best of intentions. We smile when a five-year-old announces that they want to be a firefighter, a veterinarian, or a ballerina. We might be a little more concerned when they tell us they want to be a dinosaur, although I think there’s something to be admired in the ambition.

But the question follows us as we grow older, and gradually the expectation becomes more serious. We’re encouraged to choose subjects, identify a career, obtain qualifications, and establish ourselves in a profession. By the time we reach adulthood, what we do for a living has often become one of the principal ways we describe ourselves.

I’m a lawyer. I’ve been one for more than 20 years, and it’s a part of my life that matters enormously to me. But I’m also a writer, a student, a business owner, and someone who has developed an increasingly enthusiastic interest in knitting and yarn. I love books, languages, interesting ideas, and discovering things I didn’t know I was interested in until approximately five minutes ago.

One day I’m thinking about learning another language. The next I’m entertaining the idea of owning a wool shop, or perhaps a bookshop. Meanwhile, there’s the work I already do and a growing collection of writing ideas competing for attention.

Somewhere in there, I’m also supposed to find time to actually knit with the wool I keep acquiring.

I sometimes wonder whether my curiosity is a wonderful thing or a rather elaborate system for distracting myself. Probably both.

And perhaps that’s part of what interests me about this question. We tend to regard our various interests as things that must somehow fit together. We want to find the common thread, identify our purpose, or explain how one chapter naturally led to the next. We like the idea of a coherent life story.

But I’m not entirely convinced that life needs to be quite so tidy.

When I think about the person I was at 18, I recognise parts of her, of course. But there are also so many things about my life today that she couldn’t possibly have imagined. People I hadn’t met, places I hadn’t lived, experiences I hadn’t had, interests I hadn’t discovered, and things I hadn’t yet learned about myself.

Some of those changes came from deliberate decisions. Others arrived unexpectedly. Some were welcome, some were difficult, and some only made sense long afterward. I certainly didn’t have a master plan that led me neatly from one chapter to the next.

And even if I had, I rather suspect life would have had something to say about it.

There’s another aspect to this that I think is important. When we look at people like Christine Lagarde and Jonny Kim, it’s tempting to turn their lives into lessons about ambition, determination, and what’s possible if we work hard enough. Their achievements are impressive, and there’s certainly much to admire. But I don’t think the interesting lesson is that we should all try to become more things, achieve more things, or squeeze as many careers as possible into a single lifetime.

Goodness knows, most of us have enough to do already.

Perhaps the more interesting possibility is that we don’t need to confine ourselves to the identity we’ve established, even when it’s one we value. We can be deeply committed to a profession without believing it describes the entirety of who we are. We can discover new interests without needing to justify them, develop expertise in something unexpected, or return to things we loved years ago and somehow lost along the way.

We can also change our minds.

That last one is particularly interesting to me. Somewhere along the way, changing direction can start to feel like an admission that we got something wrong. We speak of abandoning careers, giving up ambitions, or starting again, as though the years we’ve already spent doing something have somehow been wasted if we decide to do something different.

But surely the things we’ve learned, the relationships we’ve formed, and the experiences we’ve had don’t simply disappear because we choose another path. They become part of the person who makes the next decision.

And sometimes, perhaps, the decision isn’t to pursue something new at all.

I’ve been thinking about that quite a bit lately. There are many things I could do, opportunities I could pursue, and projects I could begin. I know that I’m capable of filling every available moment with something interesting, useful, or potentially worthwhile. The trouble is that an interesting life can become a very busy one, and I’m increasingly aware that the two aren’t necessarily the same thing.

I’ve begun to appreciate that being interested in something doesn’t mean I need to do something about it. Not every curiosity needs to become a project, not every hobby needs to become a business, and not every opportunity needs to be accepted simply because it presents itself.

This is something I’m still learning. Particularly the bit about hobbies not becoming businesses.

Perhaps allowing ourselves to be more than one thing also means allowing ourselves to be something that isn’t productive, impressive, or particularly useful to anyone else. We can enjoy learning for the pleasure of learning. We can make things simply because we like making them. We can be beginners again, without any particular ambition to become experts.

There’s something rather delightful about being able to say, “I don’t know how to do that, but I’d love to find out.”

And I wonder whether that willingness to remain curious is what allows us to keep becoming, regardless of our age.

We often talk about growing up as though it has an endpoint. At some stage, we’re supposed to know who we are, what we’re doing, and where we’re going. We settle into careers, routines, relationships, and identities that become increasingly familiar. Other people come to know us through those identities, and before long we can find ourselves feeling rather attached to them too.

But what if there’s no finished version of us?

What if the woman we are at 50 isn’t necessarily the woman we’ll be at 60, 70, or 80? What if there are still things to discover about ourselves, people who will change our lives, interests we haven’t encountered, and experiences we can’t yet imagine?

And what if that’s true even when we’re perfectly happy with the lives we already have?

I don’t think we need to spend our lives endlessly reinventing ourselves. There can be something deeply satisfying about continuity, familiarity, and doing things well over many years. Some of the most meaningful parts of our lives are the ones that remain constant. But I also don’t think we need to regard those things as boundaries beyond which we’re not permitted to venture.

Which brings me back to Christine Lagarde.

When she announced her decision to leave the European Central Bank, she spoke about wanting greater freedom to express herself and engage with matters beyond monetary policy. I rather liked that. After all those years in positions of enormous responsibility, perhaps part of the appeal of her next chapter is simply the freedom to participate in the world differently.

I have no idea what she’ll do next. She might take on another significant international appointment, write, teach, pursue something entirely unexpected, or decide that she’s done quite enough of the world’s financial crises for one lifetime, thank you very much.

Whatever she chooses, I hope she enjoys it.

Because while her achievements first caught my attention, it’s the possibility of all the things that might still lie ahead of her that has stayed with me.

I don’t know that I believe we’re supposed to become any particular number of things. Perhaps we’re simply meant to remain open to the possibility that there may be more to us than we’ve already discovered.

At 48, I find that a rather encouraging thought.

I’m not entirely sure what I want to be when I grow up.

And, increasingly, I’m quite comfortable with that.