The Career Adventure

As I wander through a bookstore that I visit often, I find myself in the children's section. It's interesting to see the creative ideas that you find in children's books these days. Almost none of the books are simple text and paper books. All of them are interactive. From colouring in, to adding your own identity to the adventure. From pop-ups, to little sound bytes, all the books approach more than one sense of their intended readers. I continue through to the "adult's" fiction books. All of these are now void of even illustrations. The extent of image creativity is found in the covers, many of which themselves are pretty plain.

Somewhere in between there and here, between then and now, between that time of life and our adulthood, we are supposed to drop our interaction with life and depend on ourselves. This has had me thinking over the last little while, and opened my eyes more and more to the conditioning of our lives we experience through this aging process.

This world is set up to teach all of us to become independent. We are all to build ourselves as a career. A career and life of self. I must go to school, and I must then go to study and slowly build up more experience and knowledge all aimed at one single, essentially unattainable, target. Once we get near there, we are taught that life will be more fulfilling and easier. After this? Well, after this we then wait until we have kids, so that we can encourage them to do the same. But what about that self that I've been building my whole life? Well, I guess that must just wait to die. And those kids will then repeat the cycle. Preserving our class, and pursuing our career.

No interaction with the world, or even our neighbours. No pop-ups, sound bytes, or colouring in. Just text and paper aimed at the one sense, the one objective and the one end result.

I must admit that this was one of the incentives that was behind my ease in leaving my job. I had been aiming my whole life at a career for the sake of me. Not for any other purpose. This led to an ambitious friend of mine to ask me, sincerely, "Gavin, don't you feel like you've wasted...the last 9 years of your life?" (referring to my studies and work experience.) I replied, "Not at all, because life isn't a career. It's an adventure."

If I had one regret, it's that I put so much emphasis on myself, that my career was a career life. If I had realized that there was more to life than just Gavin, then I could've built, from the start, a career adventure. Now I at least have the opportunity to use my experience, exposure and growth to live an interactive life. Where I can work for more than just self. I can, God-willing, be an asset to a global dream of compassion and love.

Because, let's face it. This isn't the Truman Show. Life is about more than me. It's about God, and He is all about interaction. That's why He gave us five (5) senses!