Yesterday the subject of “career path” came up in a conversation and it dawned on me that there is a predominant view about it.
Let us take a moment to ponder a bit on it.
A path means a journey or an experience in a broad sense. The word in itself does not imply “climbing up the corporate ladder” though it is a popular perception. The latter is more specifically referred to as career advancement, but not just career path.
In a pure sense, a career path like happiness itself is a personal matter. Someone may choose a career path to work on a different career every few years while someone else may prefer to stay at the same job for the rest of his/her life. It is definitely not a case of one-size-fits-all (“moving up” is only one of the many possibilities). There are certainly influences (implicit or explicit) from different sources including the society, peers and family to conform, but one should be encouraged to be different if one chooses to be so.