Wednesday, 29 May 2019

Considering Which Road to Follow.

A young woman acquaintance of mine will turn 25 on Saturday and she’s not terribly happy at the moment. Her story, very briefly, is this:

In the matter of education she tripped merrily along in the groove to which I’ve made mention recently. She did her degree in Commerce and Law because that’s a fairly safe bet if you want a reasonably prosperous existence and the lifestyle trappings which come with it. The problem is that she’s not really the groove type. She’s a free-spirited, adventurous type who now spends so much time withering in the heat of the corporate kitchen that she doesn’t have the time to smell roses, dance on poles, woo handsome young dudes in Argentina, climb mountains, and muse on the big existential questions as is her wont.

So now I’m about to send her birthday greetings and I’m unsure whether to point out (from experience, you understand) that youth is very short and very precious, and that maybe it’s an awful shame to waste it on building a career which will bring merely lifestyle benefits and security in old age. After all, how do any of us know whether we’ll even get an old age? And given the apparent threat of global catastrophe through climate change, how can any of us know whether money will be worth very much in thirty or forty year’s time?

I think I probably will. If she finds my view unpalatable, presumptuous, or just plain wrong, no doubt she’ll ignore me as she always does.

No comments: