Life is a river and Career Plans Volatile

Mom always taught us that our life should be like a flowing river if we want to be successful. What I want to add to it is that Career Plans also follow the same course, atleast that's what my perception is. I once wrote in my Book Club assignment we can learn a lot by observing the nature.

The mountains, rivers, gorges, canyons, forest all tell us one thing sure - change happens. And ones who survive are the ones who survive the change ie, adapt to it. Taking the example of a river. A river, in its course, encounters numerous boulders, crevices and rocks, but it finds a way around it every time. However, if the river isn't able to find a way it forms a lake or a pond where the water is stagnant. And staganant water is the breeding ground for germs and bacteria. Drawing a comparison one's life should also be like a flowing river so it keeps flowing and moving. When we become stagnant, we start to rot. Career plans, in my mind, follow the same course of action.

As kids in a playgroup we all aspired to become ice-cream wala, pop-corn wala, balloon wala and hawa mithai (read cotton candy) wala. Then, we reached Primary and Secondary school and we were fascinated by each profession and our career goals changed every time we learnt about a new profession - Defense, Medicine, Engineering, Law, Public Service etc. We reached 10th standard and now we had to narrow down on the stream we were interested in - arts, commerce or science. We all say that it is this choice that determines which way we are headed because this is the point of no return. This choice is governed by a vague idea of what we want to study in college. Once we reach college we are asked to decide what we want to do and set it in stone. This is where I disagree, I believe just as our career plans are getting shaped by each new information we recieve in school and college; we should be able to continue with this practice even after we join the workforce. We should be able to make changes like going from being a software engineer to Defense Officer or Bureaucrat. In my mind, we shouldn't really keep a secret ambition always a secret, rather we should try our best to take a shot at it as soon as possible so that we don't regret it later. Speaking of which here is a piece written on Regret, by my good friend Deep.