Balancing Your Needs Against Your Wants

Let's assume for the sake of argument that you're going to pass through a number of careers in your lifetime (because you are). Let's also assume that retirement isn't in the picture for you (because it's not). That means that, sooner or later, you're going to be asking yourself some difficult questions, chief among which is, "What do I want to do with the rest of my life?" For men, this may be a question that you haven't asked yourself in a very long time — if ever. For women, it may be something that you've been pondering over for some time. Men and women both will find themselves in a quandary with some fairly serious consequences depending on how they choose to resolve it.

First and foremost, you have the need to make a living to support yourself and your family. Over the past number of decades (since the Second World War), that list of 'needs' has grown beyond the basics of food, clothing and shelter. When you come down to it, your list of life's necessities need to be a significant upgrade from a tenement, a hovel, or a Brazilian slum. Walking or taking public transportation (although good for you and the environment) ought to be an option for you, rather than a requirement. Your employment choices are limited by your minimum definition of 'quality of life' for yourself and your family.

At the other end of the scale, you have your wants. When you're asking yourself what you want to do for the rest of your life, you also need to add to the mix the fact that, if you're spending a minimum of 40 hours a week in a career, that's an awfully big chunk of your life. How long should you need to spent your life doing something that you hate? While you're deferring your dream, how long before 'later' becomes 'too late'? What's it costing you right now not to be doing what your heart longs to do?

You know the old saying: "It's better to be safe than sorry"? As you consider your next career, balancing what you need with what you want, keep in mind that it's very possible to be both safe and sorry. Many people, late in life, look back over what they've accomplished only to see that their 'safe' choices left them empty and joyless for too much of their short existence. Purchasing your 'necessities' with your dreams may very well be paying much too high a price. If you have a good job right now, here's a strong suggestion: start planning for your career change right now. Don't wait.

This may take some guided meditation and some tricky planning to accomplish. First, let's consider the guided meditation. James Hillman (The Soul's Code) presents a very strong case for the fact that each of us has a destiny that calls to us, and that shifts and becomes transformed with every decision that we make along the way. Even so, that destiny that first began to call to us when we were very young never entirely loses its siren call. To discover our more authentic self — the one that underlies all the layers of 'shoulds' and 'oughts' that were laid down over our years of 'education' and 'training' — we need to spend the quiet time to dig down into our heart of hearts, back to that simpler, younger time of life where mystery and magic still played a role in our decision-making. What then did your heart long to accomplish? Can you recapture that (perhaps) long-lost desire? Can you reformulate it into something that can still speak to you today? The language of your destiny can never become completely archaic and indecipherable.

Once you've had a chance to stop, look, and listen to the whisperings of your destiny in your heart (the head has to be put on hold, at least temporarily), then it's time for you to become 'the man with a plan.' Here's where your analytical skills may be stretched to their limits. If your heart's desire actually represents your destiny, then there will be a path that gets you from where you are to where your destiny calls you. Finding that path will certainly take a great deal of consideration: exploring all the various aspects that your decision will involve, analyzing them, prioritizing them, making some very hard decisions, then formulating them into a step-by-step plan that will move you forward. Perhaps, at this point, some coaching would help.

Many people don't recognize the final ingredients that go into creating a workable balance between what you need to survive physically and what you need to survive emotionally and spiritually. Those ingredients are: the courage to look unflinchingly within and the courage to go forward against what seems to the world to be all logic, and the humility to accept that, no matter how well-thought-out your plan may be, the end results will necessarily look far different from anything that you had imagined. The universe evolves, and you must evolve with it. That means that every vision for the future that you create must necessarily be tentative because this, too, must evolve. Here's where your spiritual connection shows itself as being an essential element of this whole process. 'Balance' cannot be considered as a static concept; it's necessarily dynamic, like a man on a surfboard. Without a spiritual connection to act as your guiding star, you risk losing your balance.

Does this all sound like a very difficult and tenuous process? That's because it is. Setting your course for happiness for the rest of your life shouldn't be an easy task. Maturity is not for sissies. It takes insight, planning, courage and humility to accomplish. Are you man enough to handle it?