Approaching a new dawn of career possibilities

It dawned on me, while I was watching the sunrise today that had distracted me from reading about the 50th anniversary of an Elton John album, that no two sunrises are ever the same, and have never been the same.

Of course, from a distance sun rises are old hat. You’ve got your eyes on the horizon, and if you keep them peeled long enough, a yellow disc will appear behind the horizon which rises steadily in the sky – except it doesn’t. Well, not quite like that. Today’s was a beautiful orange-red and no sooner had the disc appeared, just when the bottom of the disc was about to be discernibly free from the horizon, the top of the disc disappeared into the clouds. It was not a full disc sunrise today. It was not golden yellow. I shall be onto the customer service line without delay.

Odd things, sunrises. My first thought was that if you got really close to a sunrise you’d die in a ball of flames from the heat of the sun. But of course, you never get close to a sunrise because a sunrise needs a horizon to exist, and horizons are by definition a long way from where you are watching. Otherwise, you are just flying too close to the sun. Context matters. Sunrises need a horizon. However, they are also affected by other context such as the ambient weather conditions, clouds or the earth’s rotation. The sun keeps popping up at different places along the horizon.

Sunrises provide a potent reminder that everything happens in context, and it is often a mistake to try to abstract away all the context. Careers happen in context. Careers generally require some permissive agents such as audiences, clients, customers or employers to allow us to do our work. Take any of those away, and it impacts our career.

It is common for us to be encouraged to think about our ambitions, career goals or even to follow our passions in the abstract. While these exercises may have their value, ultimately they will amount to little beyond frustration if at some point they do not make contact with context.

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Labour market realities may be unkind to one’s dream of making a fortune by becoming a Roman chariot manufacturer. A consideration of context may, however, keep the dream alive, if you are encouraged to consider broadening your offering a little by setting up in business close to Buckingham Palace or a film studio.

The challenge is that the context of our careers is changing as much, if not more, than a sunrise. Too frequently in careers work, we encourage benighted clients to imagine a dawning of a new era. In the darkness before the pre-dawn light, all we can do is work with memories of sunrises or abstractions. It is tempting to think in terms of yellow discs rising in the centre of our horizon.

The reality, as today showed for me, was an orange disc rising at about one o’clock (or 30 degrees) as I looked at my horizon. Reality is often quite different to what we are encouraged to expect. The trick is to hold those pre-dawn thoughts as hypotheses to explore, and when the sun rises, work from that point and explore the vista it offers.