Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Thought for the Day - Finding Out What We Love

It's interesting but we normally end up ignoring the one thing we love. Normally it is also true that we are good at what we love doing. But we give up on what we love and start doing something else - in most cases to earn a livelihood. Once we enter our jobs we delude ourselves that we don't really love what we loved before. In the process we give up on a fine opportunity to express ourselves

Most people are also shy to admit to things they loved doing before. Some omit their greatest loves from their list - perhaps they have buried those fine memories deep in their mind. But if one wants to find out what one really loves - to pick a career (if one is young) or to find out what one is good at (to use at a career) - all we need to do is go back in our lives and see what we have invested our time and energy in - proactively. By that, I mean doing something entirely by our own initiative, sometimes even at the cost of antagonizing our parents. We do it because we love it. It is almost a natural impulse - something we have to do whatever happens.

If we have bought the cricket kit, the sports magazines, cut out posters, stuck them up, maintained records and statistics, played cricket all over and try to watch as many games as we can (I did that) then it is obvious that we love cricket! If we buy books, borrow books, talk about books, are part of book clubs, enjoy reading - then we have some expertise with books. If we have bought a camera and clicked hundreds of pictures even if meant going off at odd hours of the day, if we have cooked new dishes and got good applause for them, if we stitch well and have stitched several designs and clothes, if we watched tons of movies and remember lots of details about movies, if we listened to lots of music and have huge collections of music and memorabilia - it is obvious where our passions lie. But then we end up doing something radically different. In all the people I knew who did engineering, it was my cousin Sanjay who devoured 'Electronics for You', a magazine, right from his fifth class, who did what he really loved in engineering. He studied electronics engineering at IIT, Madras and went on to a successful career in Electronics.

Surprisingly most of us give these passions up and restrain our primary form of expression. Like Harsha Bhogle pursued his love for cricket through commentary even after a Chemical Engineering degree from Osmania University and a PGDM from IIM, Ahmedabad, we could find professions that may be extremely rewarding which are built around our area of expertise. We would be getting paid for doing something we love and something we know well. Film journalism, film making, writing, cooking, photography, designing - the world now has many more options that are highly rewarding. The only criterion is that one develops enough expertise around it and is willing to stay on course for the long run. It could be a highly satisfying journey and rewarding too. For the young this could be one way of aligning what they are studying with what they love to get into more rewarding careers. For the middle and old aged it is never too later to start - even as a hobby or as a way to be happy. Or even a career if one is adventurous enough.

2 comments:

Sudhir G said...

WEll said hari.. i read thru a lot of your blogs & really liked your thought process. keep it up, mate

Harimohan said...

Thanks Sudhir.