"Who are you?" and "What do you want?"

Today, my school had an in-service  and for about an hour, we listened to a motivational speaker.

He started with the questions "Who are you?" and "What do you want?" He told us a little about who he was and what he wanted out of life. Then we were instructed to find a partner sitting next to us and answer the same questions about ourselves.

Is it just me, or are these questions entirely too overwhelming and way more stressful than they are intended to be? I felt like I was sitting back at an interview where the first question is, "So Lisa, tell me a little about yourself..." Um, what, um, I really love bread and I don't know my left from right and I like country music. (Probably wouldn't get me hired.)

Every time I'm asked one of these types of questions, it feels like there's a "right" answer and a whole bunch of wrong ones. For example, if my answer includes my job, does that mean my relationships don't matter to me? Or if I just talk about my boyfriend and friends, does that mean I'm a floozie? 

"Who am I?" I have no clue yet. Am I supposed to know? Obviously, we know the basics about ourselves when we're 24 years-old, but who am I really? It seems like everyone else, all the other "real adults" in the room have it figured out except me. 

"What do you want?" Well, I want happiness and success, but one time about a decade I was told that wasn't a good answer. I was sitting in some sort of a teen leadership meeting and we got the same question. When I told the lady I wanted to be happy and successful, she shot it down because it wasn't "specific" enough. I needed to pinpoint exactly what it was I wanted to be happy about and what I needed to do to be successful.

My point through all of this babbling? Maybe it's okay that open-ended questions like this scare us. We are still "trying to figure ourselves out", whatever that means. So for now...

"Who Am I?" I am positive role model to my younger family members. I am an athlete. I am a teacher. A daughter. A friend, girlfriend, eternal optimist, and a country-music lover.

"What Do I Want?" I want to start a family one day. I want to be financial stable enough to send my children to college and I want a long and happy marriage.  

Who are you and what do you want?