Facinating Thoughts

No Career is Undeserving May 28, 2011

We Asian parents love to pick careers for our kids. It’s not because our children are dumb. They are definitely a smart bunch. But we want to stay on the safe side. After all, we want to be certain that our kids choose only those respectable, rewarding, and stable careers, such as medical doctor. But do they all want to be medical doctors? What if they choose something like landscaper, or professional musician? Will they be doomed because of those “wrong” career choices?

Comparing with traditional Asian societies where you are who your social class is, the American society is wide open in personal opportunities and almost free of class identities. As long as you are not shy about paying enough blood and sweat, usually you end up somewhere more advantageous than where you have started.  Most people call this “American dream”. The founding fathers called it “the pursue of happiness”. To us who immigrate from Asia, it’s a powerful, liberating, but foreign principle. We grow up believing that only certain “respectable” careers deserving our effort. These are a cluster of “high esteem” careers that usually wow people by their titles. It doesn’t hurt if you also work for big government or famous company. Not unlike the old social class system, you acquire respect simply by taking certain hot careers or belonging to certain elite clubs. On the other hand, if you couldn’t find way to get into these careers, you’ll be automatically doomed. Individual effort makes little difference.

As a result, even in the land of opportunities, we agonized over finding “respectable” careers and climbing giant corporate ladders. We fall into depression for screwed opportunities of getting into the “decent career”. Since most careers are not worth doing, we can only feel happy and secure by possessing one of high prestige careers. We have all those great ideas. However if they are not within our narrow circle of “deserving” things to do, we couldn’t bring ourselves to do something with them.

How many great opportunities we have lost!

Consider the IT job I’ve been doing for all these years. A great many Asians are having a career in IT and considering it as a respectable career choice. Yet is it better than most other “undeserving” careers, such as operating a restaurant? Of course an IT career frequently demands a lot of high level technical knowledge. However no matter how much high level skill or knowledge we can show off, it’s still just a job, something we do to get paid. Like any other jobs, we sell our labor in exchange of a certain amount of greenbacks. It doesn’t make us more or less proud of ourselves.

In a free society, no matter how “deserving” a career is, as long as we do it under other people’s commands, as long as we do it day in and day out without making a difference, it’s no better or worse of a career at all. In contrary, the best careers are those that we own and able to make a difference. Too many of us have embarked on  “right” careers, be proud of ourselves for the fact that we are involved in something deserving or noble, but utterly fail to make any difference. We don’t own anything, for our careers and livelihood are totally at the mercy of our employers.

Let our kids go. They can accomplish anywhere.

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