Is it ever going to be possible to know what we were cut out to do professionally? There was an era when my parents (and maybe yours as well, depending on who's reading) had few choices. They had to pick one and feel lucky if they managed to make successes out of those choices. In today's times, there are choices galore. Some that are more conventional like architecture, engineering, medicine and then there are some which are newer like mass communication,event management etc.
If it was just an educational choice, then perhaps it wouldn't be the crux of the problem. In today's world though, it is possible to switch careers overnight from medicine to art from engineering to music. Its the possibility of these choices that really pisses me off. Not to say that choice is a bad thing, but this much choice?
Being a jack of many trades has never been more difficult, perhaps, in the history of mankind. If you are multi-faceted, chances are people will know about it. And if they know about it, chances are that they will compliment you and encourage you to take up one of those facets as a career choice. And if you like analysing your career and pretty much everything else in your life, chances are you will always question your decision! In the end you are filled with questions. It is very difficult to be true to your task at hand when you know that perhaps (and that's a key word here) this isn't the path for you in the first place!
So, my point is, will there be a moment of truth where we will stumble upon what we feel will be the perfect choice? A choice thats not only reasonably lucrative but also supremely satisfying? Or is it up to us to live a life of mediocrity, raise kids, show up to work, have a few laughs, fiddle with a lil something on the PC (Mac for you Apple supporters) and go back to take care of daily chores?
Will these questions ever be answered? or will it be more like never ever??
Wednesday, March 15, 2006
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11 comments:
"What is the answer to 99 out of a 100 questions? Money!"
I think you are seeking out perfection in ways that are not possible. You seem to want supreme balance between what you want and what you like to do: the dualism between your pocket and your heart and I believe you falsely assume that a balance can be struck. So you go about frustrated more and more every day cause the balance cant be struck. In short, there is no such thing as an enlightened, benevolent, down-to-earth, happy millionaire. Everything in life is about compromise.
With lots of money come lots of responsibility which in turn means less time for the things that really matter in life (and let me say that the stock exchange or a personal corporate expense account are NOT one of those things). And i wouldn’t count on there being more than one…life that is…
You have great education and great marketability G., as an engineer, and yet it is not enough for you it seems. You are unhappy and forgive me for being so frank about it, but unless you realize that your unhappiness has nothing to do with your job and income, you will continue bitching about both.
You will laugh but I think you should seriously take up Buddhism and learn a little bit about worldly attachments and letting go of greed as a pathway to reduce suffering.
Or, if that doesn’t work: maybe if you stop consulting mary jane, you will just snap out of it eventually :)
--> from LP.
Having gone through LP's comments below (of course after going through your blog), I have two things to say - I agree and disagree with her. I agree with her opinion that you are looking for perfection but I disagree with her when she says that you are looking to become a millionaire. In fact, I did not feel while reading your blog that it was lack of money that you were unhappy about. So it is not money that you seek.
Clearly, you are looking for perfection. Let me skip the intermediate deductions to give you my conclusion first. You are actually looking for a job for which you are cut out the most when compared to others, or rather your peers in the same field, and not when compared to the rest of the jobs that you can do. Symptoms of this in your blog - it appears that you will pick up a career if others encourage you. Now if you are multifaceted then chances are different people will encourage different careers (!) but that aside you will be encouraged to take a career that they feel you are better at than them or than most others, right? I mean I am sure parents/friends (and parents/friends are for most people the party whose advice will be given serious consideration) will encourage you to take up something that will help you be successful in life. Think about what they would mean by being successful and I guess you will agree with what I am getting at. But having pointed out this relative comparison, we should also accept that it, by itself, seems to be a fair enough measure - I mean you obviously cannot determine absolutely what you are best at unless you try all jobs. And then even if you do, how the hell do you know what stands for the best to realize whether you have attained it or not?
Having accepted this mindset of relative comparison, the next step is to decide/take a call or realistically set your ambitions on whether you really want to be the best of all men or accept your limitations and...
Ok, I would like to stop here. I may have given out a lot of crap above without reaching at anything worthwhile. Because, finally it boiled down to taking a decision/call etc. and if you are one who feels "chances are you will always question your decision", the above approach will not help you, so I drop it here. You are welcome to call the above mindset defeatist or a compromise as LP has done ("Everything in life is about compromise") though her context appears to be different.
PS: Buddhism perhaps teaches you to never question your decisions. (I mean isn't religion after all a blind faith, an unquestioning belief on God? It may as well teach you to have it on the decisions you make). So you can try giving it a shot. May be a good idea.
Well I think G. told me he wanted to be a millionaire of some sorts and make lots of money ( 6 digits I believe) while at the same time doing the right thing etc. Didnt you man? Well, hence my comment :))
The bottom line is that you cant make it right for everyone. And unfortunately you cant have your cake and eat it too: not when it comes to money and morality. It is imperative to realize that happiness and contentedness come from different sources. Money is marginal in the larger sense. Sure it gives you lots of freedom and opens doors for you and it is important, but there is a limit to everything. Spending your precious life chasing the money like the devil the poor soul while at the same time paying lip service to some grand gestures of generosity so you can sleep better at night will only lead to unhappiness on the long run. Finding strength to resist the desire to have immense material wealth requires a lot of introspection and certain realizations beyond the scope of this post.
Ultimately you gotta make a trade-off: how do you want to live your life? What do you wanna come home to? What kind of a person you wanna be?
And btw Himanshu, Buddhism is not a religion per se (it is not dogmatic like almost all other religions), it is not a theistic religion (no deity or god is worshipped): it is more of a life philosophy, an enlightened philosophy, a book of guidance without the regular scare tactics and deluded promises of heaven, hell, purgatory etc. It reaches out to people on a more personal level and is very introspective. It doesnt force you do anything. All these set it apart from religious scripture.
Buddhism actually constantly requires to re-evaluate your decisions and contrary to most religions, it is the only one that encourages free, independent thinking. It doesnt promise you anything as a reward if you behave in a certain way (as most religions do), only personal reward which, frankly, comes from within anyway if you do good things and are contended, and doesn’t require anyone to tell you about it. It attempts to answer questions of existential uncertainty in different ways than most dogmatic religions. Existentialism goes the same route: there is no self apart from what you create, you are always becoming, always a work in progress until the day you die. Buddha’s’ teaching of Anatman tell you that there is nothing about the self that is permanent, nothing that cannot be taken away. In the end there is only thin air.
And yet, many of us (actually most) breathe these socially bestowed identities in deep…
-> LP
Hey LP, I was just guessing what might be the outcomes of practising Buddhism. I am sure it has helped many people around the world. I have nothing at all against it. But, still calling it the "only" one that encourages free, independent thinking may be unfair to other religions. And by the way, theism and religion were two different things I thought. But that's only me.
Nevertheless, the matter in both your comments was worth thinking about, definitely. Have copied and pasted it. It's worth reading not just once.
Nice observations... and well written.
Not sure I agree with this part though..
"Being a jack of many trades has never been more difficult, perhaps, in the history of mankind."
On the contrary, if you think about it, it is much easier to be a jack of multiple trades now than it was (say) a coupla decades ago. And the reason for that, is one of the things you cite in your post itself - the availability of WAY too many choices. How? Consider this (just picking an example closer to home), in the early days of engineering there were just three main areas people specialized in - Electrical, Mechanical and Civil and as such, it was pretty much impossible for one "type" of engineer to ever even think about "drifting" into another area. Snap back to now, how many mechanical engineer-web developers do you know, or Software Engineer - CAD developers, heck aren't we all exercising our (latent?) writing abilities here?
So, I think, in some sense this "blurring" of boundaries between professions seems to be a good thing, because you can get away with just "ballparking" you're ideal career choice at the start.
I guess it all depends on the way you look at the overwhelming choices..
Its funny that you mention how others' advice serves to inform your decisions. My experience of the career dilemma has been very interesting: both in terms of my choices and in terms of advising family. When it came to my choices; especially between the more lucrative and more satisfactory one; I clearly knew what I wanted to do against all familial advice and today I couldnt be happier (I chose satisfaction). But when it came to my confused beyond belief sibling: graduation in a scientific discipline but practice in a creative one coupled with further academic ambitions of some form or other have simply compounded the problem. Its been difficult to even undertsand why anyone would have such confusion (not know what they wanted to do) and at the same time remain patient through a new career change decision every single day. Its impossible, at the end of the day, for someone else to know what and when and how much will u be happy with.
We live in an enlightened day and age.... and the biggest burden we carry is that of knowledge .... it gives us too many choices to make. Makes some of us "Jack of all trades" or "Multi- faceted".
The problem that I think you are dealing with is what constitutes success? Is job satisfaction enough? How much money is enough? How do u decide who's best? Arent these boundaries blurred too? What constitutes mediocrisy and what makes someone superior? Who decides?
Again, the price that one pays for being enlightened is that of dealing with choice. I believe, it's for u to decide what makes you happy and do what you need to get there .....on the way if you have to make compromises..... that's just the hand chance dealt you.... take what you got and run with it....
Final word of advice: If someone doesn't know what it is they wanna do ... tell them to become an architect ....... its the one profession that uses every facet of the human intellect .... to some extent .... and I'm not just saying that cos I am one
Hi guys
Thank you all for pourring in your thoughts here. All well appreciated! I was having a talk with a friend of mine as to what's right what's wrong and why are we asked to do something by the government when you cna find boundary case for almost every law that you're not supposed to break. The answer, she said, whatever works for you. you decide your own realms of correct vs incorrect. I extend that concept to, well, find your own path. For some people, not finding whats perfect ofor you might seem unnatural. For still others, sacrificing money at the expense of job satisfaction might be the key while for others, the options that society offers might be seen as a positive distraction (don't know if that's even politically correct), for me I don't know what I'm looking for.
I think I am having fun now. But there are times when I feel hollow. Feel like my work is making no difference to anyone. I just hope that we all think about what makes us happy and constantly strive to make that happen.
Hey gaurav...well read ur comment very late on my blog...yes im from SPCE...am Jwala's classmate...will comment on this post later(haven't quite read it!!:):)...nice blog here...keep blogging!
Yes its these choices that kill us...done my engg...going to do my mba...but am not happy am suddenly fascinated with the idea of movie making...feel that I would be creatively satisfied!!!but then again what is life rather career without choices...look at Harsha Bhogle..IIM-A grad ..ace commentator...Shankar Mahadevan ..computer engineer...but today a singer and a music director..lack of choices would have stifled their true pursuit for creative satisfaction!
Finally somebody said its money, somebody said its career, somebody said its morality and somebody religion. My view is people make choices, most of the time informed choices, after all we all have some sort of analytical ability to make choices, choices based on choices, many random choices, and heuristics based choices on your experience and knowledge. You try to maximize whatever you cherish, let it be money, career, or your morals. I would say in the end when your end will arrive and you will look back, would you be able to ask yourself at that time, did I live a good life? That answer will sum up everything. Until then we all keep contemplating like fools and making our choices getting nowhere.
s
Bottom line:
"All conditioned things are impermanent. Work out your own salvation with diligence"
Siddharta Gautama (aka Buddha).
conditioned = mortal, changing (everything in the universe)
--> LP.
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