Scripting our future

How certain can one be of the future? As much as we plan, there are bound to be change of plans. With every path taken, there will be detours. Under the circumstances, it is perhaps surprising that not many like to take the path less travelled and try to be adventurous about their future. By adventure, I mean a sense of thrill in giving life to the skeletons of time as we cross it.

We all like the blanket of safety wrapped around our careers. With every job, the key is understanding the worth of the company. Not really the profile of the job. Hence the insistence on big names at the cost of low personal satisfaction. Big banners have a way of alleviating our inner cribs and worries which we conveniently devote to canteen talks or pointless conversations amongst equally crippled.

Any decision we make to charter a career path which is a little radical is met with huge criticism. Somehow our sense of logic and reasoning forces us to see the world through a narrow opening when it comes to making our livelihood. Which perhaps explains the huge pool of unemployable engineers India produces nowadays.

“Better Late than Never” is oft quoted but when it comes to making career choices, this adage is often scorned at; for course correction somehow seems absurd to many. I don’t intend to romanticise the change in heart of a chemical Engineer at the end of their course towards I.T. Many a times it could also be about choosing the easy way out. But I am sure there are times, when we realize our true calling. One fine day, it dawns on us that we were not meant to do what we were trained for or for that matter what we spent a considerable portion of our life doing. Yet, to listen to that inner call is ever so hard. We cling to every perceivable reason to not listen to the voice and somehow carry on with the status quo.

Brave are indeed the ones who defy the world views and step out in attempt to make their own. The most brave being those, who climb up again and again after every fall in their journey, in the process leaving their imprints in the sands of time for posterity to remark and comment! And so I pray, may we all have the strength to undertake such journeys. For it is not the end result that counts, it is the Journey called life that matters!