Graduation

Graduation is a strange time, emerging from the student slumber and awakening into the ‘Real World’. Up until this point we have been coaxed and guided into certain paths yet by the time you throw your mortar up to the heavens, you are expected to know which path you would like to continue to follow.

For me personally it was only during the final year that I started to actively think about my future and my career for myself rather than simply following what had been set forth in front of me. Many of us are set on auto pilot and although we like to think we decide a great many things for ourselves these decisions are cropped and shaped by others. Thus there is an element of conditioning which occurs resulting in individuals wanting a high paying job in order to purchase a large car/house/clothes/gadgets etc.

I observed this through conversations post graduation with many questions being monetarily centred which seems to be all too telling of our society at the moment where revealing your aspirations to be larger than simply receiving a large pay check to be somewhat strange and not fitting in with people’s expectations.

This may have arisen through the desires of individuals increasing up until they reach a point where when such desires are met, no happiness is felt from them. This is paralleled in a story within “The Kite Runner” where Amir (the protagonist) writes about a man who finds a magical cup and when tears fall into the cup they become pearls. By the end of the story the man who started off poor but happy, tried to find ways to make himself cry and ends up with his wife lying next to him and a knife in hand crying uncontrollably.