To the worried young people who are not sure what they really want to do

I hear many young people in Japan are worried because they are not sure what they really want to do. Thinking back to when I was younger, I think that's just the way it was.

Well, I will try to write a little about it. I'm not going to give them such baseless views as "I managed it, so you guys can handle it too". Hopefully, it will be of some help to young people.

When I was in the third grade of middle school, our homeroom teacher said to us that it would not be good for us to go on to a high school only because everyone does so.

He said every student should choose his or her career path after carefully considering what kind of career they wanted to pursue in the future.

I strongly disagreed with this statement. So, I raised my hand and spoke up:

“I hate to contradict you, but I don't want to be deciding my future career at only 15 years old.”

Looking back, I must admit that I was a very difficult student for the teachers to deal with.

3 years later, I was in my last year of high school, and in an interview with my homeroom teacher, I was told I should decide what college or faculty I would enter according to what I wanted to do in the future.

Then I said:

“I think I’m going to college to look for the answer to that question.”

You could say I was still the same insolent kid, but I was seriously searching for my own identity.

I really wanted to study literature because I loved to read, but my father, who had an extremely old-fashioned way of thinking, would not allow it, saying that literature was for women.

Then I changed my mind and decided to try something I was the least interested in. I chose the economics department, which I think changed my personality somehow, partly because of what I learned, but also because of the kind of students and instructors I interacted with.

At the beginning of my college life, I felt quite uncomfortable talking with my peers. I thought the sensibilities of literature-oriented people and economics-oriented people were too different.

They and I had no overlap in the books we had read up to that point.

When I mentioned Thomas Hardy, a great British author, a friend of mine said, “I’ve never known of the economist with that name. What did he write?”

And vice versa. They said, “Of course, you must have read these books”, but I had never heard of them, which was awfully embarrassing.

Reading books about economics, I sometimes found them dry and drab, but when I wrote a paper and showed it to some friends, they teased me, saying, “Wow, what a literary expression! Is this a poem or something?”

They knew different things and felt different ways from me. I really needed a new way of thinking to get along with them.

With such experiences, I somehow managed to make it through my college life and entered the job-hunting season of my senior year.

While my classmates were quickly finding jobs, I was the only one who did not know what to do. I felt left behind. I was at a loss.

I had no idea what my classmates were basing their choice of employment on. Why did they choose a bank, automobile, or brewery company?

I thought about myself: Do I like counting money? Do I love driving or drinking beer?

No, I didn’t.

Furthermore, I was not interested in chemical industries, foreign trading, public service, or anything else though I really didn’t understand what it was like to work in the real world.

But, one day I suddenly noticed that I love watching TV. Then I took the employment tests of three broadcasting companies, and fortunately, I was hired by one of them.

I joined the company with the ambition to work in TV production, but I was not allowed to be directly involved in making TV shows. Instead, I was forced to work in sales, programming, internet, management strategy, etc.

I retired in June this year. I finished my long career without having produced a single show.

Well, I’m sorry. But it’s no use crying over spilled milk.

The only thing I could say is I have been thinking and deciding for myself what my path should be. At times I wasn't certain what I was supposed to do, but anyway I finally decided for myself.

I don't know if that was the right thing to do. Sometimes it might be a shot in the dark. But I am sure the decisions I made at the time made me the person I am today.

What is important is not what you want to do in the future, but what you should do now and decide for yourself.

The decisions you make will make up the next you. Your own decisions will help you find what you want to do and what you should do.