We are today , at that stage in our lives where the frequency of that question has reached a maximum. In retrospect, that question was temporarily suspended from conversation when I joined college in 2006, and I anticipate (in hope) that ten years down the line people wont embarrass by asking it again.
[By the way -> that Question : beta/bhaiya/dude/!@#!$!/(several other possible honorifics) , aage ke kya plans hain ?].
At any rate, Rolles Theorem guaranteed the existence of a maximum, and so it has been delivered. I might add that admitting this fact doesnt even come close to assisting us in answering the question.
The whole idea of writing this down, takes me back to a train journey earlier this year (Delhi to Lucknow Shatabdi - that part of the coach where we have two rows of seats facing each other over a small table). A slightly bored, cold and sick 'me' was accompanied by an engineer at Microsoft, some administrator in Seimens, a lady at Reliance and a Doctor who was giving post-graduate exams. (There was also this one other guy, who didn't utter a word, and was staring at everyone else with murderous intent .. but we'll let him be). The lady started the conversation by saying that money is not important, we have plenty of time to earn sufficiently later and that this is the time to follow your heart. She added that youngsters today realize this (at this point, i couldn't hold myself any longer and laughed out loud). I added after such an interruption that I hardly observe such a trend, and that from what I see in and around, money is the 'heart' today (or at least in aimless engineering graduates!) and I gave certain examples.Perhaps it was too cold, or they were too tired - but one thing lead to another and I wasn't thrown off the train for being rude. But i do believe that this whole notion of following your heart, searching for what you want is all very new. In the previous generation, I get the impression that the idea was to achieve a financial and societal steady state. A desire to establish oneself as early as possible with a greater stress on family, settling location etc. (with attraction to government jobs to boot). It is only recently that this idea has evolved to a newer definition of success where people are more open to having an opinion on what they really want. It has perhaps something to do with an increased influence of western culture, and an associated incapability to adjust or make sacrifices in this regard. Of course all this is simply a perception, and is only as true as the environment I have learnt from.
At any rate, we slowly converged to career options with several animated discussions on hypothetical scenarios, and how everyone is both satisfied and dissatisfied with what they have [ the Doctor said, "yaar engineering kari hoti to naukri to lag hi gayi hoti, MBBS is a waste"]- the discussion became philosophical : I recalled the whole incident by watching this epitomizing ad (and i love the jingle !!) on television yesterday --
After this ridiculously pointless digression, I would like to classify the range of careers I observe in people around me (in the finite interaction space that I enjoy). Perhaps this would be a logical way of going about the options that we have/have not, and attempt to make a possible decision. Civil services, generic jobs (software), specific jobs (still more software), other jobs (core sector, finance?, consulting ...), higher studies - CAT,GMAT,GRE.... yeah thats about it. So I was wondering whether it is possible to classify ones ambition (as a function of 'interests' and 'capabilities') into one of those spheres, and to decide in this current state of mental and physical existence .. which one to choose ?. The sad answer is no, and I should at this point apologize to the reader who expected anything sensible from this post. But what I do believe all of us require to get into the idea of deciding where we are and where are heading (if anywhere at all), is an amount of introspection. And this has been one of my agendas for the vacations, to think about stuff and gain a larger perspective of things such as these. But that was before I started watching Naruto, and yet another set of consecutive days with nothing to do passed away. Maybe next time...
Joy
11 months ago