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 Mellothe tragedy of an attachment is that if its object is not attained it causes unhappiness. But if it is attained, it does not cause happiness โ it merely causes a flash of pleasure followed by weariness, and it is always accompanied, of course, by the anxiety that you may lose the object of your attachment.
Anthony de Mello