Now, I am a part of the IT industry which fortunately or maybe unfortunately is a very professional world. Now, if I do a one-to-one mapping of my schooldays thoughts with the reality then a beautiful inference is that this world is not as awesome as it used to appear. But on the contrary, this world is full of opportunities and challenges. It has its own pros and cons. And, Pros and cons are not absolute but they are relative. Remember the saying 'Beauty lies in the eyes of beholder' ? Something similar and something different applies to this professional world. What looks ugly to me might look beautiful to someone else and vice versa. A lot happens in this industry that coaxes you to practice introspection even more than meditation. And, after brainstorming sessions of introspection, we convince ourselves by creating a wrapper class of illusion over reality. But, just a little later the illusion starts to disappear exposing the reality hidden beneath. All the thoughts of introspection and reality disappear when your team mate calls you for a quick status meeting. Days work ends with a sweet/bitter thought of something else that distracts you from the intricacies of this professional world.
Now the big question: Why do we need to cover the reality? Or do we really need to cover the reality? What is so ugly about the reality that we need to cover? The answer which comes to my mind is pretty simple. If I will accept reality the way it is then I cannot do justice to my integrity and my uprightness. And a person is supposed to have faith at least in himself. And if I have faith in myself then I cannot accept the reality the way it is. I have to tweak it a little or customize it a little. This sounds as a logical answer to the question. Now, if we start to investigate what's so ugly about reality then we can also doubt our uprightness. Are we reasonable enough with what we demand from reality or is it the never ending want for more that reality can never satisfy. The latter reason is the actual reason in some of the cases and having that reason is quite human coz we all are not from some place out of this world. But, in maximum cases the former argument holds and we know that we are reasonable in our demands. Next question is what all comes under reasonable demands. A simple give and take relation just like the Barter system can definitely be called reasonable. Hence, if I look forward to a give and take relation with reality then I think that I am reasonable enough in my demands. If my bad writing skills are letting you digress from the main topic then let me just mention that the reality I am talking about is the reality of this professional world.
Continuing this give and take theory, lets again go back to the school days looking for the definition of yet another term called 'Professionalism'. What is Professionalism? The word whose meaning was so simple in school days has now transformed into such a complex term that I, or maybe we, are still searching for its meaning. Everyone has his/her own perception about this word. Some common characteristics or attributes of a Professional are hardworking, focussed, career oriented and some more similar or synonymous terms. Hmmmm...Very true !!! Now, lets see more definitions which are really interesting and mind boggling. And they are Opportunist, Fortune hunter, Indifferent and some more. First time when I heard these definitions I was a bit surprised but am not anymore. I think many more of us might have heard these interpretations of the word 'Professional'. How can the meaning of a word change so much? Or maybe, the meaning didn't change at all? Or maybe, the scope of the meaning has expanded to include some more traits of human nature? To know what happened to the meaning of the word 'Professional' is important but more important is to know why did it happen. Who brought the change? What instigated the change? Obviously, the protocols of the dynamics of this professional world have brought this change. And, those protocols have been created by no one else than us. So are we the real culprits? Well, I exactly do not know how to end this topic. I think I will end it some other day :)
