During this conversation, my mom and I focused on a discussion of regrets, choices, and callings, which diverged into a discussion of flow-inducing activities and retirement planning (I think I’ll save this bit). It brought up a lot of points that we had discussed previously, but in slightly different terms.
	A recurring theme for my mom is regret about lack of exploration in college. As noted, she and her siblings faced a lot of pressure from their parents to choose among a few careers deemed to be acceptable (doctor, lawyer, engineer), and she regrets not being able to question and reject that pressure earlier on. As an undergrad, she studied computer engineering and completed pre-med requirements, noting that although she had some humanities courses, she never had the chance to explore other paths that may have been a better fit given her extremely structured course requirements. She wishes she had been able to explore other areas of science, and referred to family friends of ours, a couple who both work for the National Park Service, and thinks that she may have like some sort of environmental/conservation work, but never felt that she had the chance to learn about other things. Interestingly, she mentioned that she would have liked to have been an accountant, which “would have been just a job, but would have allowed me to pursue my hobbies”, invoking the Wrzesniewski job orientation (which I had not mentioned yet). This part of the conversation reminded me of our discussion in class about early pressure to be decided, and while I initially thought that this pressure might be increasing in my generation, it has clearly existed for some time and may not be more prevalent today. With the internet and self-actualization as a potentially increasing priority, exploration may in fact be easier now.
Part of the regrets question asked about inaction, but to me, the stronger explanation at play here was parental constraint, though my mom claimed partial responsibility, saying “I never thought to question what I was doing. It was a constraint that I also put on myself. It wasn’t an option to change. It changed when I took a job instead of going to medical school.” I followed up by asking whether she felt that she gained agency as she moved away from her parents in terms of place and age (thinking of going to Seattle for Boeing). I expected her to say yes, but instead she indicated that she rarely felt like she had agency over the course of her career, but was following a dictated and normative path, “It felt like following a recipe, I took a professional job, quit and took another job, had kids, and then I quit. Many people’s lives were like that. I would have been a lot more present…if I had to do it over again, I would really look at myself and my options and try different things.”
