Career Choices

  

 

The handicapped feeling of having to choose only one option form the hundreds available is what I define as this process of choosing a career. To be very honest it is a process of rejection rather than a process of selection because you do not select one option rather you reject all the other ones. But in India it gets even worst since choosing a career here is altogether a different story.

All our life decisions we make as Indians are all sadly dependent on the society by one way or the other. Factors like family pressure, orthodoxism, backwardness in thinking process all contribute to choosing careers having no relation to personal interest. And you know what disgusts me the most is that back here in India we have one more factor which is worst of them all - Gender. Being a girl in India also restricts your career choices other than the various injustice that already persist. It makes me pretty frustrated to hear that there are still many parts in India where being a girl cuts off more than half of your total career choices. This is how ridiculously orthodox and backward we Indians can get. No wonder we still are in the category of developing countries.

Coming back to the topic when I had to choose a career luckily I had choices in hand, how much ever limited but I did. As a 15 year old technically choices like RJs and DJs were more fascinating as career choices but then reality hit us hard and it was down to some orthodox choices for most of us. These choices that they show us during that time of choosing a career is just to show us that if you were born in some other foreign country maybe you could have thought of becoming all of that but then congratulations you're a Indian and we have restricted career options. Choose arts become a lawyer, chose commerce become a CA and choose science become a doctor or engineer was all I was given to choose from and lets be honest this applies to most of us. All said and done the career choice for me is done, sadly enough but yes its done and now I have a negligible chances to make a change since here in India it takes real guts to do that. Not because one is afraid to change but one is more concerned about society thinking of that person to be a loser that he was not able to do something he chose earlier. This is called the "log kya kahege" concept in India wherein you care more about society's thoughts on something than your own ones. Incredible India!

The part that makes me sad about this process is that it very rarely gives you satisfaction in the end. Its either frustration of choosing the wrong thing or the faith that the chosen thing gets them to the right destination. Many of us set up arbitrary targets in our heads such that in the next five to ten years where we picture ourselves. That rather is your destination but what about the path you chose. Setting up targets is cool but such distant targets that takes years to achieve is something I never do. I prefer smaller and more realistic targets everyday which I'm  sure that if I put in adequate efforts I can achieve. I have something in mind that is my distant target and in order to achieve a distant target one need to progress everyday a little. Merely thinking about the goals won't make them achievable. I've chosen a career in engineering for instance but my more preferred career option is something else. I do not go about telling everyone about it but only my close friends. Telling your close people about your distant goals helps a lot since they help you out at times to boost your morale and self belief pushing you towards your distant goal a step at a time and simultaneously take care of that your current condition does not worsen while the distant goals are being achieved.

So in hopes that someday this backwardness in society leaves my beautiful country and people put a foot forward and embrace unorthodox career options I'd like to move ahead and make sure we all make up careers less influenced by society but more by our personal interests so that we love what we do and do what we love. :D

Expectations

The strong belief or feeling that something will happen is what we all define expectations as. Expectations may sometimes lead you to disappointments, but the anger of getting disappointments may sometimes lead you to what you expected.

As soon as this word comes up, for most of us it is accompanied by disappointments. Expectations do hurt when not met but the joy and satisfaction that one experiences when they are met is worth every bit of the risk to expect. So making sure the person you expect from does not merely let you down but makes an effort towards meeting those expectations how much ever tough they be is really important if disappointments are to be averted. People who actually care will always make an effort to meet your expectations no matter what and the ones who don't are the ones you need to hold the door open for, so that they can just leave you alone and not ruin your life that would be much better without them. That's the difference between the people who actually care while the others who are just curious. Makes me sick sometimes how people call someone their "friends" when the only thing they actually do is making you feel more and more helpless by breaking all your expectations one by one ruthlessly. 

So they say 'just don't expect anything from anyone and stay happy'. We all know this ain't that easy because as humans we all do have some basic expectations from others, no matter how much ever we try we do expect the people we trust to retaliate the trust and effort we put into them. For me expectations are really important. When I know someone expects something from me it makes me feel special and confident that I'm the one they can risk to put their trust in, which makes me work towards fulfilling their expectations. I also do expect a lot of stuff from people but I make sure of one thing, the person is worth the disappointment if just in case he or she is not able to live up to the expectations. 

Expression of any kind of expectations you have from anyone is also really important. You cannot expect someone to understand what you are expecting of them without telling them. How much ever obvious it be, until you tell that person about what you want, expecting him or her to understand is not the right thing to do. Express your feeling once and then what happens is something you can judge someone on, not without him or her even knowing about it. 

There will be more times when your expectations are not met by even the trustworthy of yours. Does that mean they are no more your trustworthy? What about all the times this one person has retaliated your trust but once he or she did not and you notice that to jump to conclusions without giving that person a chance to justify? That's not how it works folks. The people you put your trust in have a special bond that makes them obliged to be there for you when needed. If he or she fails to do that one time that does not mean you push that person away from your life. Understanding that person's reasons for him not to live up to your expectations is a really important. Believers of second chances do might get hurt once more but at least they tried to maintain the bond of trust which is most important because without trust this world would not be a place to live in. 

Something that I am concerned about is when people expect a lot from others and nothing from their own selves. I expect a lot from myself. I expect myself to become the ideal person in this world. I expect to make people happy and never disappoint them. I expect myself to make my parents more proud than they could ever expect. I expect me to live up to all my expectations and if I don't happen to do that I get upset on myself as well. If I cannot live up to my own expectations how do I expect others to. So yes do expect from others but also from yourself and be equally upset on yourself when you fail to meet your own expectations.

So let us all live up to all the expectations everyone holds for us and also our own ones. Expect the unexpected because life has funny ways to surprise you. ; )