<p>I just want my kid to have a better set of choices than the local state funded party school and community college. Honestly, once they hit college, it’s hard for parents to keep pushing for ‘success’ however we define it. It does not seem to help us, and it does not seem to serve our kids, either.</p>
<p>One of my good friends in undergrad was all set to inherit his dad’s medical practice. As the only boy in his family, he’d been set up to take over the practice since before he was in kindergarten. Most the time he was a happy guy but when studying he was MISERABLE. I was the first person to ask him, at 22, if he actually wanted to be a doctor. The answer was no.</p>
<p>Ten years later, he’s in lower management at an IT firm, doing technical support- the same job I had that I hated. He could not be happier, and is doing great. He has a career he loves at a company he loves and is happy as a clam. If he’d gone to med school and taken over his Dad’s practice, he probably would make a heck of a lot more money, on the other hand I’m pretty sure I would have gone to his funeral by now 'cause he would have blown his brains out or drank himself to death. </p>
<p>It’s way less status, but in most ways he’s way more successful than the path his family chose for him. I think of the poem ‘On Children’ by Rumi when I start to fret about the kid’s future choices on colleges and careers-</p>
<p>Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.</p>
<p>You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.</p>
<p>You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.</p>