49 Keeping an open mind, being flexible

The world’s a big place – it’s bound to challenge the assumptions we form on our own little experience at any stage in life. Therefore, it’s all the more essential that we keep our minds open on many issues of importance to our own well being, and that we are prepared to be flexible and ready to change our opinions, and our plans, as circumstances develop.

One of the basic aspects on which we will probably change our minds more than once has to do with our professional life and career. Of course there are people who know from an early age exactly what they want to become and be doing in their lives, especially those who have a vocation for, say, medicine or the priesthood and so on, and the lucky few also find ways to fulfil their early ambitions. But it is also a common occurrence that many of us don’t have such a clear vision of our own futures, and so we more or less drift into academic courses and end up dong totally different things in our professional careers. And some of these are extremely influential and even powerful – such as the civil services or politics. Not every person who does, say, chemistry or physics in college ends up in a scientific lab or other position tailored to the degree. This need not dishearten us, as the first degree is a basic experience at garnering knowledge in a field, and the skills learnt in the degree course can be applied in a general way to other fields as well. For example, the politicians who have to respond to climate change or pollution with policy measures, may be grateful for the scientific matter they may have encountered early in their educational experience, even if they never went on to become scientists. And similarly for other disciplines.

Another sphere in which one has to be prepared for a change in approach is in matters of love and marriage. Of course, we are aware that in these matters there is a gulf between the west and the east, with a strong emphasis on the freedom of the individual and the quest for personal happiness in the modern western societies, which leads to frequent breakups and repeated attempts at finding the ideal partner. In the more traditional societies of the east, however, there is not that much of importance given to personal gratification, and till recently people were expected to stick with their marriage come what may, as it was seen as a union families rather than individuals. In fact marriage has been seen as a sacrament rather than a contract, and hence individual likes and longings have been downplayed, leading to long-standing unions and minimal levels of divorce etc. However this has been changing of late, as modernisation and urbanisation takes hold in even these traditional societies, but with more freedom and individualism, feelings of isolation, disappointment, and anomie (the absence of accepted norms) also creep in. In any case, it would be advisable for us to be prepared to compromise on our youthful ideas of the ideal partner, and at some point to settle for ‘second best’  if we want to move on from bachelorhood to the married state and so on.

As the wise person said, life is what is happening to us even as we are making plans for our lives. There is rarely one single way of conducting ourselves in our lives. Unexpected illnesses or failures, unforeseen offers and opportunities, all conspire to make our plans go awry, but ultimately there is some enjoyment of life’s bounties in most circumstances. That is, if we do not look too closely at the ones that got away, and if we do not compare ourselves too frequently with our friends, relatives, colleagues and the neighbours around us.