Choices and Outcomes in Life - Essay Example

Choices and outcomes in life One would identify life as a book with so many chapters that describe the manysituations we go through before we achieve what we want. In a world that is so competitive, a man eat society, a capitalised society that only spares some space for those who have, many know and have held to that notion that, making it is not a mere swing in the park. Right from the early stages of our lives, the decisions we make define our futures, and even though we are destined to be different in the society, sometimes we shape our own destiny. Our life is entirely about choices and decisions, and Ruth Chang is startled that some of these decisions are so hard to make. Steve Jobs is a typical representation of what one has to go through life. Debbie Millman believes in a courageous and a creative life. Paul Graham insists that we have to do what we love. The four writers offer us some insights on how to approach and handle failure in the face. Our backgrounds will always be different. Some are lucky enough to have a first class family while others would be lucky to have a roof over their head. Our beginnings are always different and how we perceive them shape the paths we chose in life. Many of those who make it are literally people who refused to give up. Steve Jobs does well to underscore the fact that a tough beginning does not necessary mean a rough ending. Having done so well in life, in the long run, he gets us back to the question of dreaming versus reality. He owns a company already, a multi-billion-dollar company. He asserts joking that addressing the graduates was closest he ever got to a college graduation (Jobs). He walks us through his life even before he was born, and reminds us that some of us would actually have a better chance to succeed than him. As Jobs put it, “It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption” (Stanford-Report). He was in line for an adoption as his mother would not afford to raise him. The parents in question never wanted a baby boy in the first place, and thus Jobs had another hurdle to deal with. With a biological mother who had graduated from college, wishing for adopters who would see the need for his college education was a priority. But many college defaulters don’t realize the need for such education to begin with. Jobs get us into emotion turmoil when he reveals that his mother was a college dropout during the father never graduated from high school. These parents inspire us all when they afford to have Jobs in college, pretty expensive one like Stanford. Maybe Jobs is right to be empathetic and realize the damage he was doing to their lifetime savings. He puts it better in his own words; “And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents savings were being spent on my college tuition”, (Stanford-Report). His decisions to quit after six months and open a new chapter in life signify that sometimes in life you would need to make tough decisions. In a world that treats each of us differently, one would want to know that some people’s decisions that turned right are not always right for others. Job had to go through a tough life as a dropout. Sleeping on friend’s floor, having to trade coca cola bottles for 5 cents, and having to try a decent meal in one of the local churches was degrading enough. But Jobs does it right. He identifies what he likes, what interests and what makes sense to him. He would sneak into calligraphy classes and learn what makes topography great. Some quit hoping to find some shortcuts. They wanted the best things in life but chose the worst paths in life. The easy paths are always the worst choice of paths. Many opt out for such options as crime and drug abuse. Job’s does choose to learn what he loves. He finally manages to connect the dots backward when he finally applies his calligraphy lessons while designing the mac computer. He wouldn’t have learned this without having to make a tough decision to drop out of college and drop in calligraphy. Mac would have multiple typefaces and proportionally spaced fonts. One would have to trust in something that would be in many forms; it would be destiny, gut, karma or life as Steve Jobs lists them. Such a firm approach would never disappoint someone, and would make a whole difference in one’s life. Life could be about doing what we love. Steve Jobs starts what he loves in a garage, and finally Apple grows to a multi-billion dollar company after 10 years. This is someone who would have no place to call home. He would live at the mercy of friends. But at 20, with just a few friends, the company kick starts, and he finally has something of his own. He would hire and employ. He had more than 4000 employees. This is another life lesson that, we would need to identify what falls in place with us and start it right away. Starting it would be demand self-discipline and self believe. Paul Graham, like Jobs, insists we should do what we love (Graham). He looks at the kids versus the grown up, the two categories of people who seem to love two different things. Kids would want to play more and avoid working. The grown-ups don’t even help it when they send them to school. They would see it as an opportunity for these kids to prepare for their grown-up stage of life. Graham realized that his teachers were never happy as they never loved what they did. They never loved their jobs. It takes passion and self-drive to love one’s job. Wrong choice of careers affect our lives, and we do not realize the goals and what we would consider as success in our wishful thinking. We are sometimes forced to stick where we are because we have to earn a living. In the long run, we are not productive since the best “way to do great work is to find something you like so much that you dont have to force yourself to do it” (Graham). Debbie Milkman, like all of us, admits having been a fan of a safe path “For most of my life, I followed a safe path” (Popova), her outright honesty in her opening remarks illuminates her personality. She would weigh out the options before making the choices between the secure and the uncertain (Popova). She would be cut between the creative and the logical. Her dream career was grounded in art and writing but life was teaching her to be reasonable, or forcing her to be reasonable rather, in a world where what only matter is the economic future of a person. One would be forced to compromise especially in the eyes of other alternatives that would prove a success as feasible. This type of mentality affects our decisions, and we are forced to base our choices on what would appeal to our backgrounds. Debbie’s family and financial background had taught her to be self-reliant and would have to make a choice that would ensure her financial security. Unlike Jobs, she regrets having made a decision that affected her self-satisfaction and dream. She settled for financial and creative stability over artistic freedom (Popova). She only lives in a world of imaginations with unreal images of what her future would have been if she had settled for her dream career. Her regrets are a wake-up call for some us who chose a safer path at the expense of what we believe in. We chose what promised to work right away because of fears of unknown. We lack the courage to deal with the possibility of a rough career beginning and end up with choices that define regrets in our life. Ruth Chang appreciates that choices are diverse. She gives us an insight in her open remarks; “Think of a hard choice youll face in the near future. It might be between two careers, artist, and accountant, or places to live, the city or the country or even between two people to marry” (TED). We make career choices and decisions, choices about partners and even choices about the size of the family to have (Chang). We consider some as big decisions while we see others as small yet both categories present dilemmas in their events. Petty decisions like choice of breakfast would prove hard to make, but she asserts we should not consider ourselves stupid. She reckons how she was cut between being a philosopher and being a lawyer. She would settle for law citing job insecurities but would have to switch back to philosophy later on. One would agree with her when she charges that choices carry different values that are beyond monetary terms. She underscores the fact that, a well-paying job doesn’t necessarily meet our expectations and dreams. Having to make tough, and hard choices would be empowering in the long run. The outcomes of the decisions we make reveal the role of doubt, mistakes, and failures that pop up in the progress of our lives. They tend define the future we would have when we settle for one aspect at the expense of the other. They become hard lessons to us and provide resourceful experience to others. The concepts of arts and humanities provide clear insights as to why we settle for the decisions we make. We are competent to understand with other people when they share with us their life experiences. We find touch with their fears, uncertainties and lack of courage at some different points of life. Even the most successful make wrong choices in life. Some would settle for drugs to disguise their sadness and lack of satisfaction with their current situations. Such choices and decisions affect our futures in the long run. Work Cited Graham, Paul. How To Do What You Love. Jan 2016. 21st April 2015 . How To Make Hard Choices. Perf. Ruth Chang. 2014. Popova, Maria. Fail Safe: Debbie Millman’s Advice on Courage and the Creative Life. 2009. 21st April 2015 . Stanford-Report. Youve got to find what you love, Jobs says. 12th June 2005. 23rd April 2015 . TED. How to make hard choices. June 2014. 23rd April 2015 . Youve got to find what you love. Dir. Steve Jobs. 2005. Read More