No journey is linear, least of all one’s career. As children, we are encouraged to dream of who we want to become, influenced by the experiences of our formative years, and limited only by imagination. The older we become, we are no less susceptible to external influences—be it obligations, responsibilities, environmental factors or societal expectations. We often suppress the aspirations of our childhood selves, and mould our identities into what we believe we should become, rather than pursuing what we once dreamed of becoming. In a way, we relinquish fragments of ourselves to reality, where “want” becomes overshadowed by “need”.
But what if we took one minute, or even just 10 seconds, to pause and assess our current situation? What if we were to ask ourselves, “What do we do this for, and to what end?”
Chances are, we’d come face-to-face with the realisation that things didn’t turn
