Masudur Rahman (pseudonym) graduated from a reputed public university in Bangladesh a few years ago. Like many people from the Bangladeshi urban middle class, Masud was fixated on the idea of having an aim in life from the onset of his childhood, and that was to work as a BCS officer for the Bangladeshi government.
He never wanted to do anything else, and every step of his life was going as he planned. Although after graduation, things started to take a different turn. He sat for BCS once but failed to make it past the written part. Meanwhile, he got to know about a research opportunity from one of his friends. Despite not having any interest in that field, he decided to give it a try, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Masud not only liked his job in research but also wanted it to be his long-term life goal. He wanted to pursue further research in the field, a zeal which got him into one of the top universities in the world in his field, and at the time of writing this article, he has been consistently performing quite well in his research group.
Masud had a clear vision in his mind till his late twenties but came to realise that his passion was something else through trying out a completely different field from his aim in life. This refutes the common notion that you need to have a concrete aim in life, and if you are too late in that arena, you will certainly be in a lot of trouble.
In Bangladesh, people often tend to focus on a unidirectional path when it comes to choosing a career. And due to this, someone is expected to be sure about what he or she will do right after graduation. However, people tend to have different experiences in their undergraduate life as well as have different aggregate expectations from their careers. As a result, many do not have an aim in life and want to explore many different fields before they get to know what their calling should be.
Salman Siddique Prottoy, a third-year student of Economics at the University of Dhaka, told the writer in this regard, "We are taught from childhood that a man without an aim is like a ship without a rudder." This type of indoctrination throughout our childhood has a huge impact on our psyche. We tend to grow up dreaming of safety, where there is no risk involved, and this unidimensional thinking is quite detrimental to our growth as a nation."
About his own life goal, Prottoy added, "I am not really sure about what I will do. I want to explore different arenas. I have passions in many different fields and would not like to take a big leap right after graduation. Rather, I would go out there and see what actually suits me and my personality, and at the same time, what career option would help me pay the bills properly.
Like Prottoy, a lot of millennials have a different point of view regarding not having an aim in life and exploring different options right after graduation. The traditional Bangladeshi view about aiming in life and getting a job immediately after graduating from university is slowly but surely becoming more and more irrelevant as globalisation and the advent of the internet are making people aware of the abundance of career options they have.
Also, the global recession as well as the job market are forcing people not to have any aim in life and instead keep all their options open once they graduate. Fahim Shahriar, a student at the University of Dhaka, told the writer in this regard, "People are not thinking of a concrete aim in life at this particular moment, as you never know which occupation will be in demand a few years from now due to the changing conditions in the job market with the global financial ramifications as well as the advent of technology. Hence, being better equipped with skills rather than having a hard and fast aim in life is the new norm."
30 is not too late when it comes to starting from scratch, and it is completely fine not to have an aim in life after turning 30, given the changing conditions of the world as well as the increment in the number of options. The positive thing is, nowadays it is becoming less of a taboo among the educated people of our country.
The writer is studying economics at the University of Dhaka. [email protected]
