The Unbearable Lightness or Not having a plan and being okay with it

It is important that life throws at you things that you do not understand. Things that make you stop and think a while, that make you re-evaluate, that make you pause in thought. Even if it is for just a few moments.

This point was driven home the other day, while I was prepping for some more interviews to go under the FPA series. The way these interviews are set up is not really rocket science by any means. I ask, they answer. Boom! The interview is ready to go. And that is how it has largely been for most of the 60-odd FPAs published so far.

Until the other day.

I asked for an interview, and received an unexpected reply. In essence, the interviewee was not keen on answering the questions, not because he did not want to, but because he still had a lot to figure out.

This happened with two, separate individuals on two completely different trajectories.

And it got me thinking. I was so enmeshed in publishing more interviews, asking more people the steps they took before and after the LL.M., the planning involved etc that I had lost sight of the fact that one’s education is not always a linear process.

It certainly does not have to be.

You don’t have to know what you want to do after the master’s, you certainly don’t have to have every single thing planned out. In fact, some of the most interesting (and successful) people I know have lived this very reality.

These are people who either did not know what they were going in for when they enrolled for a master’s, or were completely wrong about where their education would eventually lead them. And they were okay with that. They are definitely okay with it now.

There may well be a time when you will look back at your past and see how it all made sense, a time when your LinkedIn profile looks picture perfect – so logical, so well planned out.

You may well be a beneficiary of hindsight.

Or you may not.

I suppose the point I am trying to make is that not every single step of one’s education ought to follow a logical pathway. Some times you don’t need a plan. And you can be okay with it. Or rather, you should be.