The Office Elects the Man

You are a talented person.

How can you know which field to enter in life?

How can you know what your career path should be?

Are you young? Are you searching?

Generally speaking, the field that is best for you is one that best takes advantage of the skills that you have learned before you even knew you were learning those skills.

Unfortunately, it’s not always easy to be objective about yourself and see this clearly.

My dentist, who is a great dentist, was good at building models when he was a boy. He told me that he built every model under the sun.

He was developing skills, dexterity and patience, before he even knew that he was doing what he was doing.

It was only natural that he become a dentist.

When I was a kid I asked a lot of questions, but beyond that I had a way with other kids.

Children liked me.

And still do.

I had an accommodating personality.

When I was a little boy, my mother babysat an infant for another family. I would sit there all day and play with this nine-month-old infant.

When I was thirteen my father died, and I was left without a guide. I had to read a lot of books in order to figure things out in life.

I wanted to know why things worked and why people were successful at things.

I didn’t know I was going to be a pediatrician.

I didn’t know that I was going to be able to give advice based upon all the wide-ranging stuff I had read in my life.

My skills found me.

We become who we are before we know who we are.

It is the skills that we learn when we are young that make us a natural for the field that eventually finds us.

And it will find you, just like it found me.

I didn’t plan to become a pediatrician.

Not at all.

In fact I ran away from it as much as I possibly could.

While in medical school, I wanted to be an emergency room doctor.

But guess what?

The emergency room didn’t like me.

Nor did a lot of other occupations that I tried to master.

While I was becoming a pediatrician, I was wasting my time trying to be everything else.

You name, I tried it.

I tried writing plays. I tried writing computer programs. I tried novels. I even tried cartooning.

I tried being a YouTube star. I tried becoming a businessman.

So what?

It doesn’t matter what I wanted to become.

It didn’t matter that I liked doing those things.

Those things didn’t like me back.

Ultimately, you have to stick with that which likes you back.

And that which likes you back is a field that requires the skills that match best the skills that you possess.

It will find you.

Don’t fret about life.

Put one step in front of the other and work diligently at what is before you.

All the anguishing in the world isn’t going to get you one step further.

As Ulysses Grant once said, and I will paraphrase: The office elects the man.

Forget about what you want.

Go to the dance with the boy or girl that likes you.

Sincerely,

Archer Crosley

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