What You Seek is Seeking You ZOOM OUT–Duke Career Center Podcast

This Rumi quote fits in a number of ways into the context of figuring out your major and your career path. Let's look at how it can affect your frame of mind as far as how to successfully navigate your college career, some of your career decisions and really the way that you approach life.

Transcript:
How do we adapt to change? How can we find something we don’t know we are looking for? Food for thought on an existential game of hide and seek on this episode of Zoom Out–The Career Center Podcast.

My name is Nathan Wilson, Assistant Director of the Duke University Career Center here and you’re listening to the Career Center podcast.

Any of my colleagues or students could tell you that I'm a sucker for quotes and there's one in particular that I want to talk about in this episode. A few months ago, my colleague, Leanne, whom I love very much, you gave me a pin that sits on my desk that says, “What you seek is seeking you.” This is a quote from Rumi who is a 13th century poet and a tremendously influential person in the Western world. Even though we are pushing 1000 years since he was around, his influence can still be felt today.

This quote, in particular, I think it fits in a number of ways into the context of figuring out your major, your career path. Whether you're very young or really in any stage in your life, there are a lot of different lessons and messages that can be gleaned from this quote. If you just do a Google search of this quote itself, you'll see a number of different articles and a number of different interpretations. I want to look at a few of them and see what we can kind of take from those and how it can affect your frame of mind and give you some lessons as far as how to successfully navigate your college career, some of your career decisions and really the way that you approach life.

So, one of the lessons that I take from this, is the idea that you have to be open to change. At some point in your life, inevitably you're going to be in a position where you're not exactly thrilled with your circumstances. You may be struggling in a class or even at the school that you're attending, in general. Or you could be unhappy in an internship or a job or one of your student organizations. Inevitably, there's going be some time when you are feeling stuck. But, ask yourself if you’ve ever said this before? I hear this the all the time from students, this idea that I don't want to change majors or I'm scared to change my plan because I've come this far. This thinking is a big mistake. If you're not open to change, you’re not opening yourself up to the possibilities that you don't even know about that could be awaiting you or, moreover, in line with this quote, actively seeking you. You never know what's going to happen 10 minutes from now, much less tomorrow, much less a year from now. And that can be equal parts scary and exciting. If you are in a place where you’re really happy with the way things are going, unfortunately, the sad reality is that things can change at any moment but on the flipside that's just as true if you're unhappy with your circumstances.

Maybe you have a really difficult boss and they are, without you even knowing, working on their exit strategy right now. You might be losing all kinds of sleep tonight not even realizing that tomorrow morning your boss is going to quit.

Same thing with just chance meetings with strangers. There's no law that says you can't meet your next boss or your next romantic partner or next best friend when you're in line at the grocery store or if you're on the bus going from one end of campus to another, right? Things can happen at any moment and being open to those changes that can come your way can make all the difference between being stuck in something long-term, not knowing how to get out, and realizing that any moment you might have an exit there waiting to something much better.

Part of that though (and another way I can inte