September 8, 2020 - 361 - "Right Person-Wrong Career"

 

Bad Choices

     It's funny how we have to make our most important choices, the ones that should most reflect who we truly are, when we're too young to have actually become who we truly are.  

Career Paths Gone Wrong

     We have a gardener here in San Miguel.  (This sounds very grand.  It's not like he's manicuring the lawns and hedges of our 20-acre estate.  We don't have one blade of grass in the place.)  He's a man who comes in twice a week and keeps the many plants from dying of thirst. 

     Today, he was telling Michael about moving a plant from a pot that the neighbor-cat had used as a litter box.  He held up his hands and said he'd gotten cat caca on them.  

   Michael asked why he didn't wear the gloves we'd bought for him to keep here.  I wondered why a gardener is so upset about getting his hands dirty. How different is most fertilizer from a little cat scat?

    This just revealed another soul in the world stuck in a career that wasn't exactly their calling.  

     He's good at his job, knows plants, does some cutting back and repotting, but I've always suspected his mind was elsewhere. 

     Maybe he wanted to be a musician?   He's expressed a great love of the Beatles. He sings along with and identifies other musicians that happened to be playing in the house when he's around.  

      But how many people really feel their job is their vocation?

     I once had a doctor who, I swear on an entire coconut cream pie, hated sick people.  Seriously, zero bedside manner.  It was more like she tried to embarrass you out of being sick.  "It's not that bad.  It's a fracture, not a break.  It's just a cold.  People are always coming in here complaining about their aches and pains.  What a bunch of whiners!"

     Her passion probably lay more in being a junior high coach, or perhaps a prison warden.  But there she was, stuck day after day with a lot of people telling her about their ailments.

     Most flight attendants have had it up to their eyebrows with dealing with the public.  It might have been a passion at one point.  They may genuinely have liked people when they took the job...but that's a whole lot of togetherness.

My Theory

    I think there is probably 1 in a 1000 people who had a clear vision of what they want to do for a career, went for it, and enjoyed the hell out of every minute of it for a whole job.  Then there are another, oh, 300 people, who just make the best of it and find ways to keep their interest up, while trying to pay the bills, build some savings, and hopefully, hang onto some benefits.

    Then the rest of the people complain—a lot.  

     ...and treat their patients, clients, or passengers, like the idiots they believe them to be.   It's not pretty.  

There Must Be a Better Way

    There surely could be an improvement on those aptitude tests they give you when you're in high school.  You take a test and 'boom!':  one person should be an accountant, another an artist.  

    Probably making a list of careers, then having students draw a number, is just as accurate.

Daily Hits of Happy

     -Did I mention that Nestor, the amazon.com.mx delivery dude is my new best buddy?

     -It looks like rain.  I love rain.

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"You had better to be a round peg in a square hole than a square peg in a square hole.  The latter is in for life, while the first is only an indeterminate sentence."

-Elbert Hubbard

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"You'd be surprised how many people violate this simple principle every day of the lives and try to fit square pegs into round holes, ignoring the clear reality that things are as they are."

-Benjamin Huff

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