This or That!

So often in life do we hear such phrases : 'I can only do one thing, either this or that! ' , or 'What is the right path to follow? This way or that way?' , or 'Men are more logical minded and women are driven by emotions, so being a man you should follow the path of science and engineering, and being a woman, you can do well in roles of HR and marketing.'

While there is some truth to these statements, they are not totally correct; or should I say some of these questions are not the right questions to ask. As a human being, we have almost INFINITE potential, and caging ourselves into pre-thought-of models is a stupid thing to do.

We can talk about this idea from multiple perspectives. For example, when we are making some decisions in our life, but I will limit the discussion in this blog to the career perspective.

Though it's true that men are more logic driven by nature, they have their creative and sensitive side too. It's just that they are not encouraged by society to follow that path that much. And while women can be very creative at times, their intellectual side also yearns for food many a time; we just have forgotten about it and gotten used to driving such things under the carpet.

As we all know, there are people on both ends of the spectrum always. So even if we talk about the average person, and stop for a moment to REALLY think about the capabilities of that person without any biases about their gender, or their ancestors, or family background, we will FIND that the field is limitless. Every person has ATLEAST ONE thing they are very good at, we just need to nourish that to let it blossom fully; so that the whole society can enjoy the fruits of it.

And that is the reason why when we are bringing up our children, we need to make sure that we keep our biases aside and keep on encouraging them - encouraging them so that they can explore all paths before arriving on one that they truly want to follow.

Also do remember that following one path does not mean that you have to stop thinking about other paths totally. You can in fact jump into other paths whenever you want, it's just that you need to have that creative side of yours open to the idea. Creativity flourishes when you have knowledge of different areas and your mind is open. So the more a person wants to acquire knowledge in different areas, the better it is. That is when real innovation flows.

The next time your mind comes upon this thought : This or That ? , just allow your mind to ask the question: What if Both, or All? It's not beyond you, definitely not!!