Don’t bother if you are not going to be a doctor, lawyer or engineer!
Have you heard your parents or other Indian parents say that? If you have not, you are one of the few lucky ones whose parents supported their right brained preferences. Many parents around the world, especially Asian parents want their children to be doctors, lawyers or engineers. If you are not choosing one of these as your career path as a young adult of indian decent in your parents’ eyes you are doomed.
The reason for our parents’ thinking is that the society has portrayed these career paths as successful, wealthy, a sign of intelligence and full of status. and lets face it who doesn’t want to be proud, be admired and looked up to? In most cultures status and approval from others is a big thing. However, this way of thinking is shifting as we become more aware as a society.
As our daughter is coming to the point of choosing a career path and heading off to college, most Indian aunties and uncles will ask her so what are you going to be?, what “line” (College major) will you take? Yes, a 17 year old should not have to choose a singular path to concentrate and focus all her amazing skills onto. Having said that, if you know where you are going and you pick something you want to explore, you will get there much faster.
“Our desire as parents is to know what feeds our children’s spirit, what areas are they fully alive in, and guide them to be that way no matter what career path they choose.”
Some children are passionate about sciences and others in exploring their creative sides. If I had said to my father, I want to be an artist or even for that matter a teacher when I was 17, his response would have been,” that’s for those who don’t make it as a doctor and there is no money in it”. Of course, his views now are different as I am a teacher and I love what I do! We as parents can guide and nudge them in a direction we think is best for them based on our conditioning or we can ask and encourage them to find or do something where they come alive and make a difference in this world.
We at sanskarteaching.comencourage students to feed their creative sides while learning Gujarati culture and language, as we strongly believe when your roots are grounded, the tree flourishes vibrantly.
Here are five reasons why you ought to support creative career paths:
1. Creativity feeds your soul, regardless of if you are a mainly right brained or left brained person. It creates balance in your life and in many cases it’s a way of meditating and focusing all your energy onto something bigger than you.
2. You can make money and be creative. Creative career paths does not mean that you are a hippy wandering in the woods with your paint brushes and easel. There are many career options that allow you to remain creative and use that to make a difference in your world and make money doing it. Multimedia artists, animators, game designers, fashion designers, interior designers, graphic designers, art directors, architects, film directors are few of those careers. Every career path has its struggles and the success is in the struggles.
3. What you think matters – honor your intuition.
All of us get these inspirations and inklings to do something and many times we over analyze things for many reasons like what will everyone else think? Or will I make enough money to live comfortably? In doing so, we don’t honor what our spirit is guiding us towards. As parents if we support young adults in doing so, we will be encouraging them to stand for what they believe in and not give in to what the society thinks and values.
4. How does one find their passion?
Well, Doing something you are passionate about is overrated, I think when you are fully present in what ever you are doing, in that moment you become passionate about that. You are fully immersed and there. One should ask,’ where do you feel most alive? Rather than what are you passionate about? Some times it’s hard to know what you are passionate about. Allowing young adults to explore the areas they want to within financial means give them an opportunity to see what they want to do in life for a living.
5. Our world needs creative people. If all of us were doctors, engineers or lawyers there would not be any balance in this world. We need those who can think outside the box and as parents by encouraging you are allowing them to do this. They may come to a point where they feel they can utilize their creative side and pursue medicine at the same time and do something unique there. Freedom to choose without any emotional blackmailing (as many parents do) can take them to their highest choices.