When I was eight, I wanted to be a veterinarian because I loved animals. Then, I promptly learned that being a vet wasn’t only about petting dogs and playing with kittens, a realization which cut medical school from my future.
When I was fifteen, I was absolutely convinced I would become a successful actor and move to Los Angeles, because I did a mildly good job in a musical or two. Of course, I was later delivered three reality checks in one: I wasn’t such an incredible actor, I was aiming for a nearly impenetrable industry and I wasn’t willing to put in the work for “my dream.”
At this point in my life when I get asked the question, “what do you want to do with your life?” I respond with a generic answer, something along the lines of “I like writing.”. The truth is that I don’t know what I want to pursue. Not only that, but I also don’t want to be forced to decide what I want to pursue at the ripe age of 19, being boxed into one specific career for the rest of my existence.
But this is the reality of our capitalist society. Introduced to the concept of finding our “dream job” as mere children, we are handed fire helmets, stethoscopes, play kitchens and toy babies. From that, along with whatever glamourized careers are shown on television, we’re expected to have those perfect career paths nailed down in our teensy eight-year-old brains. We should be able to play freely in our childhoods, to decide what toys we want to play with based on our own ever-changing interests and to decide what shows to watch based on those same, ever-changing interests! If you’ve ever been around a child, you understand that their opinions change by the hour. If a kid can’t stick with a favourite colour for more than thirty minutes, there’s no way they can decide what job they want to hold for the rest of their life.
The same should apply to every person no matter their age. And yet, we’re still being told, especially in our university years, that life has a specific plan in mind for us, one that we must follow to a T. Though everyone around us seems to understand this plan, convincing us that we’re the only ones lost in our life path, I can guarantee that everybody else feels just as confused. The truth of the matter is that dreams and interests naturally change over a lifetime. Our expectations are often foiled by the twists and turns that actually occur. Instead of telling ourselves that we must stick to the plan and follow a specific career path, we can instead learn to expect the unexpected.
Letting go of our expectations of a career can be hard after we’ve invested so much time and effort into a particular goal but in the end, this act of release is freeing. You’re no longer defined by what you want to do in the future – you can, at last, embrace who are right now.