Two roads diverge before me…
Posted by QingWang on August 27, 2009
Two roads diverge in the path before me
And sorry I cannot travel both.
Alone here I stand,
Looking far as I can
To where it merges with the shadowed woods.
Neither path is greener
Neither path is wider.
As time expires
There is no rewind.
The only certainty is my journey in mind.
As I consider two (now three) different career choices, I’m forced to dig up many of my inner desires. As my former boss Jen Serra quotes on her facebook page, “life is not about finding yourself…it’s about creating yourself.” Great point. What do I want to create?
I’ve been told to just take each day as it is…to seize the day and make the “best” of it. But how can I make the best of something when I don’t know what that something is? When I went to visit Duke last week, I didn’t just pick up the car keys and drive. Instead I looked on a map, got on the right roads, and planned my arrival time. Now as I drive down the highway of time, where do I want to go? This leads to a string of questions:
Why do I want a job?—to earn money/income.
Why do I want income?—to live and do the things I want. Freedom.
Why do I want freedom?—to pursue my passions in life and make a difference.
Why do I want to make a difference?—I want to leave a legacy.
Why do I want to leave a legacy?—so I can live a life of purpose and fulfillment.
Why do I want to live a life of purpose?—to be happy.
I keep coming back to this same question of happiness…it’s such an elusive goal! I would certainly love to talk to anyone who wants to share some wisdom on this topic. In the meantime, I’ve got to define what kind of purpose I want to take on.
Wendi said
The best job is something that you can be happy about while you are doing it and still be happy about after you’re done with it.
But then again, it’s not about the job, it’s just about your mindset.
If you think you’re happy, then you’re happy. Only you have to believe you are happy for you to be happy.
Dinae Hartzog said
I think the first step in your young life is to surround yourself with good people and then try to figure out what is that you are good at and comes naturally to you, so that work doesn’t feel like work (not an easy thing to do),in fact I think it is a very hard thing to do at anytime in your life, much less in your late teens and early twenties while you are still evolving. I did not have a career for a great part of my life, yet I found a great amount of satisfaction from what I did do. I was able to create a comfortable, happy and stimulating environment at home. I structured each day to do the things that seemed important to me at the time.
I was also able to cultivate my various interests, baking, gardening, diving, biking etc. and developed them because I had the time. I love to read the classics so I read everyday so my mind wouldn’t turn to mush. I was able to volunteer in schools where my kids were, which I enjoyed immensely. The teachers became my friends. I also created many important and lasting friendships through the years.
I have thoroughly enjoyed my life so far and found great purpose in what I was doing. I get some measure of happiness each day from my kids. So, it only recently,(in the past few years) that I started the soul searching for what to do with myself. I do like teaching (just not in public school)and when I go to the library, the time flies by so quickly that I can’t believe it. I love everything that I do there. But it wasn’t easy to figure all that out. So… I still think, the most important thing is surround yourself with good people, work hard and it will come. Trust you instincts.
Dinae Hartzog said
There is one thing that I would do differently. I would have started grad school a few years earlier and experiment with different jobs. That is my advice to my kids: go to grad school if and when you can. It opens up doors… but it’s not for everybody.