Pushed into Unwanted

A few days ago, I went through a post by @davidbright with title Lessons Learnt. In this post he told about her negative emotions when he didn't appreciate his admission in the local university. His post reminded me of an incident that happened in my family more than a decade ago.

My elder brother wanted to join Air Force. After his intermediate (F.SC) exams, he applied for the Air Force test, but he couldn't clear them. He applied in the following exams too but he couldn't clear it in the second attempt either. Now, it was the time to not waste time any more and apply for further education in the university.

He wanted to do Engineering. However, his score in the previous class wasn't that much high to allow him to enter in the only government university available in our city. That's the best university of the whole province and being the government university the fees is quite lower in comparison to private institutes.

Though we were in financial crisis those days but my father didn't leave him alone. He supported him to get the admission in a private engineering university. My brother gave the admission test there and cleared the initial test. Then, it was the time to apply for the field of engineering. He wanted to get the admission in electrical engineering. At that time the merit of score was the highest for electronics engineering followed by the electrical. I remember since my childhood I heard only the name of two professions: doctor and engineer. The third profession we knew about was an officer in armed forces. That's it. (There is still not much awareness in my society about the diversity of professions one can opt for). Anyways, among the engineering, there was a mindset that the electrical or electronics is something that is worthwhile, and the rest of the fields are merely scrap.

When the result of my brother's admission announced, he was in too much despair to find out that he was not selected in electrical engineering . Instead, he was selected for software engineering. I remember his reaction. He was like the life has doomed.

_source

He wanted to be an engineer either aeronautical or the electrical, while the fate had landed him to a new third route i.e. software engineering. He was hating this field (without experiencing anything about it) only because it had replaced those areas where he had wished for going. He applied for a change in the field and moved to architect engineering, but thanks to someone who told him that there was not much scope for architect engineering in our country. He once again applied for the shift in domain and was shifted to software engineering again. This time he had accepted what the fate had decided for him.

The four years of his university academics passed, and the time for job approached. He had his friends who were doing electrical engineering at that time. My brother got the job even before passing out while his electrical engineer friends were jobless. Some of them got the job after passing out but with a lower pay scale than my brother's, while some others were still jobless.

When my brother reached in the market he realized that the engineering in IT and Computer is the only engineering line that is thriving in our country (for many reasons) while the other fields including electrical engineering is not much valued. He became so much satisfied with his profession and is progressing well in it.

Sometimes God has bigger rewards than what we have chosen for us, but due to our impatience and inability to understand God's plans we become desperate. We are so focused on the missing element that we overlook the new opportunities. Accepting the reality and stop complaining about the missing is the first step towards success. As @davidbright stated in his post.

Complaining about what's missing is a job of a fool, since life should be about looking for what's missing in things and looking for opportunities in that.