Some etymologies hold a suggestive observation about the word’s present-day use, where the word holds meaning under the surface, the shape dimly visible—if at all—from the surface.
The etymology of career hit me this way. The Online Etymology Dictionary outlines it this way:
1530s, “a running (usually at full speed), a course” (especially of the sun, etc., across the sky), from French carriere “road, racecourse” (16c.), from Old Provençal or Italian carriera, from Vulgar Latin *(via) cararia “carriage (road), track for wheeled vehicles,” from Latin carrus “chariot” (see car). The sense of “general course of action or movement” is from 1590s, hence “course of one’s public or professional life” (1803).
A running at full speed?
That’s a distressing image to map onto one’s career. I would hope that such a serious part of our lives merits a more measured pace.
The etymological image reminded me of a passage in Charles Handy’s book The Second Curve. Handy is concerned that we don’t pay enough attention to the possibility of pivots and transitions in our careers.
There is a danger in barreling along a career path set for you by someone else:
[The] was standing on his own, in the corner, while the party went on around him. Elderly, obviously, but also a bit lost, so I went over to talk to him. ‘Have you lived here long?’ I asked. ‘Yes,’ he replied, and added, ‘I’m 93, you know,’ although I had not asked. ‘Is that so?’ I said. ‘Then you must have had a fascinating life – tell me about it.’‘Well, when the war broke out I was 19. I tried to join up but they said that my lungs weren’t up to it and that I must do industrial work instead. They offered me the choice of two factories, one north of the Thames, one south. Since I lived north I chose that one. That was where I stayed for the next 40 years, moving up a couple of levels during that time. Then I retired and came to live here.’‘And then . . .? I prompted him. ‘That’s it,’ he said. Then, after a long pause, he added, ‘Sometimes I think that I should have done something more with my life.’A moderately successful life followed by a long slow decline into eventual oblivion. Nothing wrong with that, I mused, except for what might have been. Why was it such a familiar story? Why did it remind me irresistibly of so many people whom I knew, with long years spent compiling a CV that now seemed irrelevant, of so many businesses and other institutions, indeed of much of the country where I was living…
Taylor Coe 