Straight talk on small talk

No one aspires to do something. One either does that something or one does not.

One aspires to get paid to do something.

I find it to be the case that many people are in jobs that are what they do to get by until they can get paid to do what they aspire to get paid to do.

Hence, I think we need to adjust the assumptions implicit in small talk we make with people with whom we have just become acquainted. Rather than asking "What do you do?" to inquire what they do for a living, with the assumption that what they do for a living defines what they aspire to be paid to do, when the likelihood is greater that it's merely what they do to earn an income without any particular significance to their desires. So the question should be very specific: "What do you do for a living?" That asks exactly what information is sought without any intentional or inadvertent insinuation about what the information says about the person.

We'll place the onus on the person to state whether the job is, in fact, what he or she had previously aspired to get paid for; unless explicitly stated, the assumption should be that the journey (so to speak) is still pending.

A follow-up query, logically, becomes "What would you like to do for a living?" (That is, if the answer to the first question did not already tackle that.)

If the person is too thrown by this new protocol, or answers with inappropriate candor (given the novelty of the relationship), by all means fall back on discussing the weather, or how tasty the hors d'oeuvres are.

Sometimes you'll need to wing it. Nature of the beast, I'm afraid.