Walking on the road of life, we have become inconsiderate towards how we move forward as long as it means we are

Choose a career that matters to the world, not one that matters to only you

Kathmandu

Sweet, draw an apple’.

I mastered a figure that appeared less like an apple and more like an exploding wannabe circle.

‘Good! Now, colour the apple.’

I abused the red crayola to scrape the paper and keep strands of my colouring out of my doodled pencil outline.

Post enrolment, my love affair with unsullied best buddies, toys that animated my eyes, and a mammoth play area that meant longer runs lasted two days. The third day introduced me and my new friends to our erratic loathing for books and pencils.

So we unsuccessfully threw a mighty tantrum to remain at our safe havens, flinging our bodies like we were in a life threatening brawl with the air and screaming our lungs out for our demands to be met. Play-time became limited, meals became limited and six looked like nine as did five look like six.

As we grew older, people said all kinds of things. Somehow everybody seemed to miss the biggest thing that is there to be told — ‘the world is going to roll you, left, right and centre’. We struggled but thankfully managed to understand that it ran on ‘appropriate limitations’, though not necessa

rily appropriately justified  —  there is nothing before A and nothing after Z; there are only so many jobs, so many banks and so many traffic lights; our bodies are not an exception to this rule, doing things only as much as we can.

Find your niche and hone it they said. But what if you were a jack of all trades instead? Whatever you do, just do not care about what others think and be yourself they said. But how are you to engage yourself to the greater good of the world with an attitude that roared ‘caring about others will only make you their prisoner’? Truth be told, human beings naturally do care about what others think; unfortunately, for all the wrong reasons. We trade having a really good time for having really good pictures instead, just so that we can post it over the internet.

We trade an hour of putting our time to good use for shopping for things we love but do not need. We trade smarter brains for dumber heads. What have we become? Preys to our own inventions!

Life is so easy. Why have we made it so hard? Poverty, hunger, terrorism, armed conflicts, persecution, overpopulation, climate change, global warming, resource and energy crisis, deforestation, species extinction, unsustainable agriculture, waste disposal – I feel an imminent pang in my heart to say the list goes on. People believe these are some of the world’s biggest problems. Are the world’s biggest problems the biggest problem facing humanity or the bitter fact that many all around the world are not even fully aware of the biggest problems?

Walking on the road of life, we have become inconsiderate towards how we move forward as long as it means we are. WE are rolling the world, left, right and centre to be fair, not the other way around. It is bad enough that life is unpredictable and every tomorrow is not promised, why are we striving towards further less promising futures?

We created the problems. Consequentially, we are the solution.  The first step, henceforward, on this endeavour would be to remind ourselves about the single most important rule to coexist in this planet — appropriate limitations. Today, choose a career that matters to the world, not one that matters to only you.

How about being known as he who finished the unfinished, he who dealt with the undealt, he who unloaded the load, he who created when it was easier to consume or as he who asked that extra question when it was easier to accept? Pick and choose, but make sure it makes a difference to the living world that is dying! Do we want to work together as one or fall slaves to the destruction of the world we mastered?

The author is a Business Development/ Marketing Consultant and a freelance trainer. Say hi at kunjika.p@gmail.com or ping her on twitter @KunjikaP