Hands-Free Is Not For Me

Hate To Break It To You is a recurring feature wherein we dispense succinct home truths that everyone could benefit from facing up to, unpleasant as they may be.

Photo by Bill Ruhsam

Recently, I asked an overseas coworker what his future plans were after our project ends. He threw out a couple of vague possibilities about school and different fields he’d thought about exploring, but when I pressed him for specifics, he responded with:

“I will not choose career. Career will choose me.”

When did Yakov Smirnoff* start dispensing self-help advice?

The universe is not your guidance counselor, folks. And it goes without saying that you shouldn’t leave choices and decisions about how and where you’ll spend your  professional and personal life up to its whims. Yes, even deciding not to make a decision is actually a decision unto itself, but that doesn’t mean that governing your future (capital or lowercase f) via apathetic shoulder shrug is actually a viable course of action. There are times to hang back, to wait to see what develops, observe how things play out, to just take a breather and some intellectual and physical space for yourself, but once que sera sera becomes your default decision-making approach, well, you’ve got a problem.

There’s a balance to be struck between jumping on life’s back and attempting to beat it into submission with a 2X4 and simply lying there thinking of England* while it has its way with you. The former being an an awfully tiring and frustrating battle royale that’s apt to leave more bruises than you care to count and the latter being completely devoid of agency. And frankly, it doesn’t sound like a particularly good time either, does it?

Sometimes, your judgment will suck. Sometimes, you will make the wrong choice. Sometimes, you’ll hurt someone or get hopelessly lost. But no matter where you’re headed, having both hands on the steering wheel (and the opportunity to consult a map and bactrack or change directions at will) is a hell of a lot more empowering and productive than buying a one-way ticket on the Predestination Express (which has a lot in common with the bus from Speed) and simply going along for the ride.

*I tell myself that there is at least one someone out there who picks up on and appreciates all of the obscure reference I toss around. Whoever you are, I offer you an intellectual fist bump of solidarity.