"I was going to be a scientist"
About this Quote
There’s a quiet drama in the past tense here: “I was going to be a scientist” isn’t a childhood fun fact, it’s a fork in the road rendered in five plain words. Ben Okri, a poet whose work keeps slipping between the material and the mystical, lets the sentence do double duty. It carries the weight of a life that might have been built on proofs and procedures, while hinting at the moment he realized that explanation isn’t the same as understanding.
The intent feels almost disarming. By choosing “scientist” - a role culturally coded as rational, prestigious, anchored - Okri sets up a contrast that makes his eventual vocation sharper without bragging about it. He doesn’t say, “I chose poetry instead.” He leaves the second half hanging, inviting the reader to supply the missing turn: a change of country, a change of class position, a change of imagination, a change of faith in what language can do. The understatement is the point. It suggests that becoming a poet wasn’t an aesthetic preference so much as an existential rerouting.
Context matters: Okri came of age amid Nigeria’s political upheavals and later moved between Nigeria and the UK. In that kind of historical weather, “I was going to be” can signal more than personal indecision; it can mark how institutions, conflict, and displacement redraw individual trajectories. The subtext is not anti-science. It’s a claim that in a world where reality itself feels unstable, the poet’s job is another form of inquiry - less laboratory, more lantern.
The intent feels almost disarming. By choosing “scientist” - a role culturally coded as rational, prestigious, anchored - Okri sets up a contrast that makes his eventual vocation sharper without bragging about it. He doesn’t say, “I chose poetry instead.” He leaves the second half hanging, inviting the reader to supply the missing turn: a change of country, a change of class position, a change of imagination, a change of faith in what language can do. The understatement is the point. It suggests that becoming a poet wasn’t an aesthetic preference so much as an existential rerouting.
Context matters: Okri came of age amid Nigeria’s political upheavals and later moved between Nigeria and the UK. In that kind of historical weather, “I was going to be” can signal more than personal indecision; it can mark how institutions, conflict, and displacement redraw individual trajectories. The subtext is not anti-science. It’s a claim that in a world where reality itself feels unstable, the poet’s job is another form of inquiry - less laboratory, more lantern.
Quote Details
| Topic | Science |
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