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Folly Pays

October 6, 2004

People make dumb choices.

Ask the good folk of Decatur, Illinois. In the mid-19th century, the state legislature decided to build two new institutions. It gave Decatur the first choice: do you want the university or the asylum? And Decatur chose - yup, you guessed it. Which is why the University of Illinois is in Urbana-Champaign.

Presidents - now, this will really surprise you - are not immune from folly. William Henry Harrison chose not to wear an overcoat to his inauguration in 1841. Bad move. He caught pneumonia and died after just 30 days in office.

When it comes to idiotic choices, I play second fiddle to no-one. Why on earth did I choose to become a commercial lawyer? Fifteen years later, when my efforts to find fulfillment in the six-minute time-sheet were in tatters, I read a description of my Myers-Briggs type. Allow me to paraphrase a little:

If you are an INFP, do anything - clean sewers, truck uranium, become a congressman, even - but do not - repeat, NOT - become a commercial lawyer.

I thought (a little tetchily, I admit): You're telling me this now?

And yet .... if I hadn't become a commercial lawyer, I wouldn't be doing what I'm now doing. Looking back, I'm delighted that I became a commercial lawyer. Though I didn't know it then, those years were equipping me for the wonderful working life I now have.

I like to tell this story to people who fear that to change course would be to consign their careers to the trash-can. It's not like that. Whatever you've done to date has its place in the future scheme of your life. There are callings waiting for you that you would be denied, but for the experience gained from the career choices you now regret.

So don't rail against your dumb career moves: celebrate them. You may not yet see their value, but in time you will. That, I think, is what Kierkegaard meant when he said: "Life is understood backwards but must be lived forwards."

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