Apples or Oranges?

When 25, I googled the difference between life goals and career goals to get a better understanding of what the hell was going on in my life. Reading the clear text gave me the precious understanding. Several learnings. Pearls of wisdom.

Firstly, there is a difference between a job and a career. For a job, you can expect to have a life outside the job; a career is your way of life. It can be either extremely rewarding, if you are cut out for it or have learnt to enjoy it; or otherwise, god may help you.

Invariably after passing out from top colleges in India, 99.99% of us focus on career goals, consciously or sub consciously. The understanding is that, a rewarding career would in turn provide for rich experiences, which would make life good. So far, so good. But it does happen in certain cases, am still not sure how many, that a chosen career might not be able to provide enough life experiences, as you value them, or unable to lead you to the life goals important to you. So far, so good? Then the understanding comes, or the plight of the choice, are you really career oriented or life oriented. Are these 2 things really as different as chalk and cheese?

Mostly, people strike balance in between the two. But striking balance never creates history, does it. Interesting are the ones who go to the extremes, successfully. They either pick up and excel in career goals, or realize the importance of their life goals and plunge for it. Another bunch lies somewhere in between, slogging too hard to live a rewarding life while doing justice to their careers. And the rest of the bunch, who fails to put a mark in his/her career, or plunge for life goals, or heroically enough, able to justify the pains of career building to sustain a good life, is just a lost case.

Are you career oriented or life oriented? How consistent you have been in this orientation? This would define a lot of things. From your choice of partner, to choice of job you sat for placements, to the level of frustration you face at work.

This lens does not solve any real problem, no. But it does enable me to understand the conflict I face within at this age, day in day out.

Am I career oriented, am I life oriented. Can I depend on my career to get the life/experiences/skills I dreamt of? Am I too dreamy to pursue clear cold cut career goals? Am I adaptive enough to modify my life goals to fit within the realms of my choice of permissible career? Would that be satisfying enough?

What is interesting is, when executed well, both the orientations can be highly rewarding. Kicking ass in boardroom would lift my mood equivalent to learning and performing a cartwheel. Do people get to do both? Or does then happiness lie in the continuous ability to strike the balance between the two and rationalisation.

And what, if you are both. Both life oriented and career oriented. Is it possible? Is it allowed? Does it take a superhuman effort? Would it ensure you are suitably rewarded? Are you getting a headache? I have not even started on family orientation.

Apples and oranges, they say.