On the Womb.

This evening, I was sitting at the Didirion Station in San Jose waiting for a bus to Los Angeles. It was a Monday evening, 11 pm. I just finished a goodbye dinner in a good restaurant with my sister.

I was at the station from where the cheapest buses to Los Angeles were taking off. And I was there mostly to taste some folklore. Just to try some simple life from time to time once I am on travel.

I just grabbed my newest iPhone in order to put the pics on Instagram. At that very moment, I noticed a girl sitting on the opposite bench.

She had long, unbrushed hair, she was wearing an old, grey hoody and a pair of dirty sneakers. Meanwhile, she was curling over some textbooks and making notes on the paper.

She looked cute but on the other hand, she looked like that child no one is taking care of. She clearly did not feel good when being observed either. And she was occasionally taking glimpses at everyone around like a person with some sort of anxiety problem.

“Poor girl” — I thought. — “What is she even doing here?

She is probably commuting to school by these dirty buses. And she is still making notes in print, what an old school style, doesn’t she have a laptop?” And then I realized that the person sitting on that bench is me.

More precisely: me, twelve years ago. I was looking like this, and behaving like this.

How Much Can Change in Twelve Years?

So much can change in as little time as a decade… Where will I be in a decade from now?

No idea… According to Super (1980), a career unfolds as a sequence of roles across a whole lifetime, so this uncertainty is normal.

Why Do I Feel Like I Am Still in the Womb?

I am writing this because I feel I am developing at a fast speed right now — as a researcher, and as a person. The destination, however, remains unknown.

In a sense, development is inevitable. Whatever you choose, then — as long as you are willing to learn — you will develop in this or that way. Indeed, according to Diener, Lucas, and Scollon (2006), even our happiness set points shift over the years.

According to Blackwell, Trzesniewski and Dweck (2007) in Child Development, students who believe intelligence and ability are malleable rather than fixed show a steadily rising academic trajectory over time. Those who see ability as fixed, however, tend to plateau. That makes me feel like being in the womb: yes, life is a gamble.

Is Life a Gamble Worth Playing?

But with expected returns so high that the strategy does not even matter that much, it is just important to keep on playing. According to James March’s (1991) classic model of organizational learning in Organization Science, systems that lean too heavily on exploiting what already works tend to do well in the short run but stagnate in the long run. Sustained exploration, by contrast, keeps options open for the future.